aiS RETIREMENT AND LAST DAYS. CVII
Indeed, the sermons of Owen and his compeers, not only compel us to form a high estimate of the preachers, but of the hearers of those times, who could relish such strong meat, and invite its repe- tition. And seldom perhaps on earth has a preacher been called to address more select audiences than Owen. We do not now refer to the crowding multitudes that hailed his early ministry at Fordham and Coggeshall, or to those little secret audiences meeting in upper chambers, to whom truth was whispered rather than proclaimed, but to those high intellects that were wont to assemble around him at Oxford, and to those helmed warriors and heroes of the Common- wealth, who, on days of public fasting and thanksgiving, or on high occasions of state, would stand in groups to hear the great Puritan discourse. Many of these earnest souls were no sciolists in divinity themselves, and had first drawn their swords to secure the liberty of prophesying and uncontrolled freedom of worship.
We should form a very imperfect estimate of the character of Dr Owen, and of the beneficent influence which he exerted, did we not advert to his greatness as a man of affairs. In this respect we need have no hesitation in asserting his superiority to all the Puritans. Attached from principle to that great party whose noble mission it was to assert and to vindicate the rights of conscience and fi-eedorn of worship, he soon rose to be its chief adviser on all occasions of great practical exigency. He combined in a remarkable degi'ee that clear perception and firm grasp of great abstract principles, that quick discernment of character and detection of hidden motive in others, which acts in som.e men with all the promptitude and in- fallibility of instinct, — that fertility of resources, that knowledge of the times for vigorous action and of the times in which to eco- nomize strength, which, when found in great prominence and happy combination in the politician, fit him for the high duties of states- manship. He was the man who, by common consent, was called to the helm in a storm. Baxter was deficient in more than one of those qualities which are necessary to such a post ; while his ardent nature would, on some occasions, have betrayed him into practical excesses, and at other times his love of nice and subtle distinction would have kept him discussing when he should have been acting ; — while Howe's elevation above the affairs of daily life, his love of solitude, which made him almost wish even to die alone in some unfrequented wood, or on the top of some far remote mountain, disinclined, if it did not unfit him, for the conduct of public affairs. But Owen's singidar excel- lence in this respect was early manifested, — and to no eye sooner than to that of Cromwell. We have seen him inviting his counsels on the affairs of Dublin University; taking him with him to Scotland, not only as his chaplain, but as his adviser in the affairs of that campaign,
VOL. I. H
CVIII LIFE OF DR OWEN.
when he found it more difficult to manage its theologians than to conquer its armies ; and at length intrusting to him the arduous and almost desperate enterprise of presiding over Oxford, and raising it from its ruins. And throughout more than thirty years of the long struggle of the Puritans and Nonconformists, he was the counsellor and presiding mind, to whom all looked in the hour of important action and overwhelming difficulty.
Some have accused Owen and other Nonconformists of his age as too political for their office. But who made them such ? Was it not the men who were seeking to wrest from them their dearest civil rights, and to make it a crime to worship God according to their con- sciences? With such base ingenuity of reproach were the Huguenots of France accused of holding secret meetings, after they had been for- bidden to meet in public. It was no small part of Owen's praise, that he saw and obeyed the necessity of his position ; and that perhaps, of all the Puritans of his age, he was the most quick to " observe the signs of the times, and to know what Israel ought to do." This is the estimate we should be disposed to form from a simple retrospect of the facts of our narrative; but it appears to have been the judgment which some of the best of Owen's contemporaries were not slow to express. In that admii'able letter to Baxter from which we have already quoted, referring more particularly to Owen's vice-chancellor- ship, the writer says, " And though his years, piety, principles, and strait discipline, with the interest he adhered to, affected many of the heads and students with contempt, envy, and enmity at the first ; his personal worth, obliging deportment, and dexterity in affairs that concerned him in that station, so mastered all, that the university grew not only content with, but proud of such a vice-chancellor. And, indeed, such were his temper and accomplishments, that v/hatever station or sort of men his lot, choice, or interest, should place him in or among, it were no small wonder that he were not uppermost: — that was his proper sphere, which those with whom he was con- cerned generally courted him into, and few envied or coriived." ^