But the aspect in which we most frequently think of Owen, and from which our highest estimate of him is formed, is that of a theo- logical Avriter. Even the mere material bulk of his works fills us with surprise ; and when we consider the intensely active life which Owen led, their production strikes us as almost incredible. In Russell's edition, together with the edition of his " Exposition" by Wright, his works fill no fewer than twenty-eight goodly octavo volumes, though we almost sympathize with the feeling that the folio form, in which many of them originally appeared, more fitly represents their intellectual stature. "Hew dov/n the pyramids," says Sir James " Corrived " is an obsolete English word for " rivalled."
HIS RETIEEMENT AND LAST DAYS. CIX
Stephen, with a feehng which every lover of the old divinity will un- derstand,— " Hew down the pyramids into a range of streets! divide Niagara into a succession of water privileges ! — but let not the spirits of the mighty dead be thus evoked from their majestic shrines to ani- mate the dwarfish structures of our bookselling generation."
It is only, however, when we have acquired some considerable familiarity with the contents of these volumes, and when we remem- l:>er that on almost every one of the great controversies, — such as the Arminian, the Socinian, the Popish, and the Episcopalian, — he has produced works which, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, are still regarded by unanimous consent as master-pieces on the themes on which they treat, that we feel unliesitating confidence in placing the name of Owen among the first names of that age of amazing intellectual achievement. In some of his controversies he had to do with men of inferior ability, of whom it might be said, as of some of Fuller's ojoponents, that " they scarcely served him for a breakfast;" but in other controversies, such as that with Goodwin on the perse- verance of the saints, he was called to grapple with some of the best and most accomplished men of his age. But he never quailed before any opponent. More than one of his works put an end to the contro- versy by driving his adversaries to despair; and only once — viz., in his rash encounter with Walton — did he retire undeniably vanquished from the field. It is unnecessary to repeat observations that have been made in the narrative on Owen's various works; but this seems to be the place at which to indicate what seem to have been the most distingTiishing qualities of Owen as a theological writer.
Perhaps no better word could be found to express one of the most striking characteristics of Owen, than that which Mackintosh has used to describe the writings of Bentham, — exhaustiveness. He goes through his subject "in the length thereof, and in the breadth thereof." It was his custom to read all the works that had been written on his particular subject, — especially the writings of opponents, — and then to pass deliberately from point to point of his theme, and bring the whole concentrated light of Scripture to bear upon its elucidation and establishment. He leaves nothing to be added by one who shall fol- low in the same path, not even little gleanings at the corners of the field. — We venture to describe another feature of Owen's works by the phrase, Theological conservatism. In an age remarkable for its intellectual excitement, which gave birth to all manner of extrava- gances in opinion, like the ocean in a storm, bringing to the surface monsters, and hydras, and chimeras dire, and then producing in due f^eason a reaction into the shallows of Rationalism, Owen displayed no disposition to change. There is no writer in whose opinions through- out fife there is more of consistency and unity. There is e\eryAvhere
ex LIFE OF DR OWEN.
visible strong intellect and profound thought; but it is intellect, not sporting itself with novelties, and expending itself in presumptuous speculation, but reasoning out and defending what apostles taught, and feeling that there is enough in this to fill an angel's grasp. Various causes combined to work out this quality in Owen, especially his pro- found reverence for the authority of Scripture, leading him to travel over its ample field, but restraining him from passing beyond it ; the influence of the truth upon his own heart, as a living power writing its divine witness within him; and also his vast learning, which enabled him to trace opinions to their source, and to detect in that which the ignorant and half-learned looked upon as a dazzling dis- covery, the resurrection of an exploded error, whose only novelty Avas in its name.
Allied to this, and in part accounting for it, was what we would style the devout Calvinism of Owen's cast of thought. Baxter and he held substantially the same truths, their views, even when they seemed the most divergent, differing in form and complexion more than in substance; but still it is evident that the two great men had each his distinct and favourite standing-point. With Baxter, the initial thought was man in need of a great restorative system ; and this led him outward and upward, from step to step of the Christian salvation. The initial thought with Owen was God in the past eter- nity devising a scheme of salvation through a Mediator; which he unfolded in its wondrous arrangements and provisions from age to age of the world, and whose glorious results were to continue to be enjoyed for ever and ever. This gave a comprehensiveness and an elevation to Owen's whole theology, and accounts in part for the fact that Baxter seems greatest when bearing upon the duties of the sinner, and calling him to repentance, — "now or never;" while Oavcu comes forth in his greatest strength when instructing and building up those who have already believed.