2 Anon Mem., p. xxxiv. Her epitaph by Mr Gilbert helps to fill up the por- trait : —
"Prima setatis virilis consors Maria, Rei domesticae perite studiosa. Rebus Dei di)nius se totum additendi; Copiam illi fecit gratissimain."
There is a touching passage in a small work, remarkably well written, but little known, that leads us to think of Owen as an unusually tried parent. " His exer- cises by affliction were very great in respect of his children, none of whom he much enjoyed while living, and saw them all go off the stage before him." — Vin- dication of Oweu by a friendly Scrutiny into the merits and manner of Mr Bax- ter's opposition to Twelve Arguments concerning Worship by the Liturgy, p. 38.
3 Wood's Athen. Oxou., iv. 100, 101.
XCVI LIFE OF DR OWEN.
in preparing his remaining works for the press. Among those who, for brief periods, were thus connected with him, we meet with the names of two persons of rather remarkable history, — Robert Ferguson, who, beginning his Hfe as a minister, became at length a political intriguer and pamphleteer, and, after undertaking some perilous adventures in the cause of William, ultimately became a Jacobite, and ended his eccentric and agitated course with more of notoriety than of honour; and Alexander Shields, a Scotchman, whose antipathy to Prelacy was surpassed by his piety, and whose name Scottish Presbyterians still venerate as the author of the " Hind let Loose." ^ These two proba- bly laboured with Owen principally in the capacity of amanuenses; but the amiable and excellent David Clarkson shared with him the duties of the pastorate, and rejoiced to divide the anxieties and toils, and soothe the declining years, of the illustrious Puritan. Clarkson evi- dently won the generous admiration of Baxter ; and Dr Bates beau- tifully si3oke of him as " a real saint, in whom the living spring of grace in his heart diffused itself in the veins of his conversation. His life was a silent repetition of his holy discourses." ^
With the help of his amanuenses, Owen completed and published, in 1677, " The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, through the Impu- tation of the Righteousness of Christ, Explained, Confirmed, and Vin- dicated,"— a work in which all the ratiocinative strength and command of resources of his best controversial days appear undiminished. We concur, indeed, to a certain extent, in the censure which has been charged against that part of it which treats of the nature of justifying faith, as tending to perplex a subject whose very simplicity makes explanation equally impossible and unnecessary. The censure, how- ever, ought not to be confined to Owen ; for on the subject of faith the Puritan divines, with their scholastic distinctions, were far inferior to the theologians of the Reformation. The great difficulty about faith is not a metaphysical but a moral one ; and there is truth in the observa- tion, that elaborate attempts to describe it are like handling a beautiful transparency, whose lustre disappears whensoever it is touched.
This great work was probably the ripened fruit of many years of thought. But as we examine the productions of Owen during the few remaining years of his life, it is easy to discover that they belonged principally to three classes, and two of those classes, especially, owed their origin to events that were occurring around him, and to dan- gerous tendencies which his ever-vigilant eye was quick to discover. First, there were his various writings against Popery, such as his
' Orme, 301. Burnet sketclies the character of Ferguson with his usual bold distinctness : " He was a hot and bold man, whose spirit was naturally turned to jilottiiig," etc. — Own Times, i. .o42.
3 Funeral Sermon by Dr Bates, on John xiv. 2, " In my Father's house are many mansions," &c. — ReliquijB Baxterianaj, part iii. p. 97.
HIS RETIREMENT AND LAST DAYS. XCVII
" Churcli of Rome no Safe Guide ; " his " Brief and Impartial Account of the Protestant ReHgion;" and, in some degree also, his " Humble Testimony to the Goodness of God in his Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations." In all of these we hear the watchman answering, " What of the night?" He is alive to the sympathies of Charles and his court with Popery, — to the readiness of not a few in the Church of England to move in the direction of Rome, — to the avowed Ro- manism of the Duke of York, and his possible succession to the throne, — and to the dangers to religion, to liberty, and to every thing most dear to man, which these lowering evils portended. The wisdom and foresight of Dr Owen in many parts of these writings, which we now read in the light of subsequent events, strike us with surprise, often with admiration.
In addition to beholding the Protestants duly inspirited and alarmed on the subject of Popery, Owen longed to see all alienations and divisions among them dispelled, and the various parts of the great Protestant community so united and mutually confiding, as to be prepared to resist their common adversary. Not that he was the less convinced of the necessity and duty of separation from the Epis- copal Church; for in a controversy with Stillingfleet, into which an ungenerous assault of that able Churchman drew him, he had pro- duced one of his best defences of Nonconformity ;^ but he felt a growing desire, both to see the real differences between the various branches of the Nonconformist family reduced to their true magni- tude, and, in spite of the differences that might, after all, remain, to behold them banded together in mutual confidence and united action. His work on " Union among Protestants" was written with this wise and generous design ; and this, we are persuaded, was one of the chief ends contemplated by another work, — his " Inquiry into the Origin, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches."^ We are quite aware that some have repre- sented this highly valuable treatise as a recantation of Dr Owen's views on church polity, and a return to those Presbyterian sentiments with which he had entered on his public life ; but an examination of the treatise, we think, will make it evident that this was not in Owen's thoughts, and that his aim was rather to show how far he