age, and most conspicuous among the English Congre- gationalists of his day. Descended from an ancient and honored familj' in Wales, he was born (161G) at Stadham, near Oxford. His father, Henry Owen, was an earnest and laborious minister in the Church of Eng- land, but a Noncomformist. At the age of twelve he was entered a student at Queen's College, Oxford, where, while he was still a boy, his diligence in study and his progress in all the departments of learning were such as are not often equalled by maturer minds. From the first he seems to have had in view the clerical pro- fession; but in the early years of his university life he was impelled (as he afterwards believed and confessed) by no better motive than ambition for eminence and power in the Church of England. In the progress of his studies he Avas wakened by the Spirit of God to higher thoughts and aspirations ; and he began to work with religious conscientiousness, seeking to do God's will, though he had not yet attained the full freedom of the sons of God. The Puritan habit of thinking and the Puritan spirit, which Owen had inherited from his father, brought him into collision with certain ritual- isms which Laud, then chancellor of the university, was forcing upon Oxford, and which to the evangelical party of those days seemed to be " popish superstitions." Com- pelled to choose between a compliance with the new regulations and a relinquishment of his place and hopes in the miiversity, he chose the latter. He was then twenty-one years of age, having commenced master of arts two years before, and having been more re- cently ordained to the ministry of the Church of Eng- land. That confession of Puritanism cost him (as he knew it must) the favor of an uncle in Wales who had chiefly supported him, and whose estate he was ex- pected to inherit. At that time the conflict between king Charles I and the English people as represented in Parliament was impending, and men everywhere, young and old, were taking sides. Owen had taken the side of reformation in tlie Church and of chartered liberty in the state; and all who knew him knew where he would be found. To such a man, so long as Laud might remain at the helm of the ecclesiastical estab- lishment, there was no prospect of preferment. Many a Puritan clergyman in those days found refuge and employment as chaplain or tutor, or both, in the family of some nobleman or gentleman favorable to that party. Such was the beginning of Owen's ministry. But at the outbreak of the civil war the nobleman in whose family he was then employed took arms for the king, while he himself declared for the Parliament, and not only lost his place, but was disinherited by his Welsh uncle. Being thus thrown upon the world, he removed to London, which had become the metropolis of Puri- tanism. His religious life at the university and in the country had been earnest and resolute, but had not been enriched with the joy of salvation. He had not found in his own experience an assured peace with God through Christ. But it happened to him, not long after his removal to London, that having gone on a Sabbath morning to hear a celebrated preacher, he was disappointed by seeing a stranger in the pulpit. The unknown preacher's text, " Why are ye fearful, O j^e of little faith ?" was so appropriate to Owen's habit of mind that it commanded his most earnest attention, and the sermon that followed led him into the light. Thenceforward he knew how to rest upon the Gospel with a cheerful and sustaining confidence. His re- moval to London seems to have been with a A-iew to the publication of a work on the chief theological con- troversy of that age. His Display of A rminianism, published in 1642, was an elaborate confutation of the doctrines which Laud and his abettors were introducing into the originally Calvinistic Church of England, and which were regarded on all sides as having more than an accidental connection with the partj' of absolutism in the state, as well as with tendencies Romeward in the Church. The learning and ability of that book.
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