Sin and Temptation (Volume 15) E-Book

John Owen

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Complete Works of John Owen
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 1186

Beschreibung

John Owen's Classic Works on the Evil of Sin and the Power of Grace, Updated for Modern Readers Regarded as one of the greatest theologians in history, 17th-century pastor John Owen remains influential among those interested in Puritan and Reformed theology. The Complete Works of John Owen brings together all of Owen's original theological writing, including never-before-published work, reformatted for modern readers in 40 user-friendly volumes. Volume 15, The Christian Life—Sin and Temptation, includes the treatises "Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers"; "Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It"; "The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin"; and "A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace." Each work has been edited with extensive introductions by Kelly M. Kapic, Justin Taylor, and Shawn D. Wright. Released over a number of years, The Complete Works of John Owen will inspire a new generation of Bible readers and scholars to deeper faith.   - Edited and Formatted for Modern Readers: Presents Owen's original work, newly typeset with outlines, text breaks, headings, and footnotes - Informative New Introductions: Provide historical, theological, and personal context - Supporting Resources Enhance Reading: Include extensive annotations with sources, definitions, and translations of ancient languages - Part of the Complete Works of John Owen Collection: Will release 40 hardcover volumes over a number of years - Perfect for Churches and Schools: Ideal for students, pastors, theologians, and those interested in the Puritans

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The Complete Works of John Owen

The Complete Works of John Owen

The Trinity

Vol. 1  Communion with God

Vol. 2  The Trinity Defended: Part 1

Vol. 3  The Trinity Defended: Part 2

Vol. 4  The Person of Christ

Vol. 5  The Holy Spirit—His Person and Work: Part 1

Vol. 6  The Holy Spirit—His Person and Work: Part 2

Vol. 7  The Holy Spirit—The Helper

Vol. 8  The Holy Spirit—The Comforter

The Gospel

Vol. 9  The Death of Christ

Vol. 10  Sovereign Grace and Justice

Vol. 11  Justification by Faith Alone

Vol. 12  The Saints’ Perseverance: Part 1

Vol. 13  The Saints’ Perseverance: Part 2

Vol. 14  Apostasy from the Gospel

The Christian Life

Vol. 15  Sin and Temptation

Vol. 16  An Exposition of Psalm 130

Vol. 17  Heavenly-Mindedness

Vol. 18  Sermons and Tracts from the Civil Wars (1646–1649)

Vol. 19  Sermons from the Commonwealth and Protectorate (1650–1659)

Vol. 20  Sermons from the Early Restoration Years (1669–1675)

Vol. 21  Sermons from the Later Restoration Years (1676–1682)

Vol. 22  Miscellaneous Sermons and Lectures

The Church

Vol. 23  The Nature of the Church: Part 1

Vol. 24  The Nature of the Church: Part 2

Vol. 25  The Church Defended: Part 1

Vol. 26  The Church Defended: Part 2

Vol. 27  The Church’s Worship

Vol. 28  The Church, the Scriptures, and the Sacraments

Hebrews

Vol. 29  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 1, Introduction to Hebrews

Vol. 30  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 2, Christ’s Priesthood and the Sabbath

Vol. 31  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 3, Jesus the Messiah

Vol. 32  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 4, Hebrews 1–2

Vol. 33  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 5, Hebrews 3–4

Vol. 34  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 6, Hebrews 5–6

Vol. 35  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 7, Hebrews 7–8

Vol. 36  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 8, Hebrews 9–10

Vol. 37  An Exposition of Hebrews: Part 9, Hebrews 11–13

Latin Works

Vol. 38  The Study of True Theology

Shorter Works

Vol. 39  The Shorter Works of John Owen

Indexes

Vol. 40  Indexes

The Complete Works of John Owen

The Christian Life

Volume 15

Sin and Temptation

John Owen

Introduced and Edited by

Kelly M. Kapic, Justin Taylor, and Shawn D. Wright

General Editors

Lee Gatiss and Shawn D. Wright

Sin and Temptation

© 2024 by Crossway

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

The introductions, text, and notes for Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers; Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It; and The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin are adapted from Overcoming Sin and Temptation, edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006). Used by permission.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

Cover image: Marble Paper Artist: Vanessa Reynoso, Marble Paper Studio

First printing 2024

Printed in China

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6028-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8600-2 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8598-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Owen, John, 1616–1683, author. | Taylor, Justin, 1976- editor. | Kapic, Kelly M., 1972- editor. | Owen, John, 1616–1683. Of the mortification of sin in believers. | Owen, John, 1616–1683. Of temptation, the nature and power of it.  

Title: Sin and temptation / John Owen ; introduced and edited by Kelly M. Kapic, Justin Taylor, and Shawn D. Wright, Lee Gatiss and Shawn D. Wright, general editors.  

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2023. | Series: The complete works of john owen ; volume 15 | Includes bibliographical references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2022049149 (print) | LCCN 2022049150 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433560286 (hardback) | ISBN 9781433585982 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433586002 (epub)  

Subjects: LCSH: Sin—Christianity. | Temptation. | Christian life—Puritan authors. 

Classification: LCC BT715 .O932 2023 (print) | LCC BT715 (ebook) | DDC 241/.3–dc23/eng/20230626 

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049149

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049150

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-05-22 10:07:12 AM

Volume 15

Contents

Works Preface

Editors’ Introduction

Overviews and Outlines

Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It

The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin

A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace

General Index

Scripture Index

Works Preface

John Owen (1616–1683) is one of the most significant, influential, and prolific theologians that England has ever produced. His work is of such a high caliber that it is no surprise to find it still in demand more than four centuries after his birth. As a son of the Church of England, a Puritan preacher, a statesman, a Reformed theologian and Bible commentator, and later a prominent Nonconformist and advocate of toleration, he is widely read and appreciated by Christians of different types all over the globe, not only for the profundity of his thinking but also for the depth of his spiritual insight.

Owen was born in the year that William Shakespeare died, and in terms of his public influence, he was a rising star in the 1640s and at the height of his power in the 1650s. As chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, dean of Christ Church, and vice-chancellor of Oxford University, he wielded a substantial degree of power and influence within the short-lived English republic. Yet he eventually found himself on the losing side of the epic struggles of the seventeenth century and was ousted from his position of national preeminence. The Act of Uniformity in 1662 effectively barred him from any role in the established church, yet it was in the wilderness of those turbulent post-Restoration years that he wrote many of his most momentous contributions to the world of theological literature, despite being burdened by opposition, persecution, family tragedies, and illness.

There was an abortive endeavor to publish a uniform edition of Owen’s works in the early eighteenth century, but this progressed no further than a single folio volume in 1721. A century later (1826), Thomas Russell met with much more success when he produced a collection in twenty-one volumes. The appetite for Owen only grew; more than three hundred people had subscribed to the 1721 and 1826 editions of his works, but almost three thousand subscribed to the twenty-four-volume set produced by William H. Goold from 1850 onward. That collection, with Goold’s learned introductions and notes, became the standard edition. It was given a new lease on life when the Banner of Truth Trust reprinted it several times beginning in 1965, though without some of Owen’s Latin works, which had appeared in Goold’s edition, or his massive Hebrews commentary, which Banner did eventually reprint in 1991. Goold corrected various errors in the original seventeenth- and eighteenth-century publications, some of which Owen himself had complained of, as well as certain grammatical errors. He thoroughly revised the punctuation, numeration of points, and Scripture references in Owen and presented him in a way acceptable to nineteenth-century readers without taking liberties with the text.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, and especially since the reprinting of Goold’s edition in the mid-twentieth century, there has been a great flowering of interest in seventeenth-century Puritanism and Reformed theology. The recent profusion of scholarship in this area has resulted in a huge increase of attention given to Owen and his contribution to these movements. The time has therefore come to attempt another presentation of Owen’s body of work for a new century. This new edition is more than a reprint of earlier collections of Owen’s writings. As useful as those have been to us and many others, they fail to meet the needs of modern readers who are often familiar with neither the theological context nor the syntax and rhetorical style of seventeenth-century English divinity.

For that reason, we have returned again to the original editions of Owen’s texts to ensure the accuracy of their presentation here but have conformed the spelling to modern American standards, modernized older verb endings, reduced the use of italics where they do not clarify meaning, updated some hyphenation forms, modernized capitalization both for select terms in the text and for titles of Owen’s works, refreshed the typesetting, set lengthy quotations in block format, and both checked and added Scripture references in a consistent format where necessary. Owen’s quotations of others, however, including the various editions of the Bible he used or translated, are kept as they appear in his original. His marginal notes and footnotes have been clearly marked in footnotes as his (with “—Owen” appearing at the end of his content) to distinguish them from editorial comments. Foreign languages such as Greek, Hebrew, and Latin (which Owen knew and used extensively) have been translated into modern English, with the original languages retained in footnotes for scholarly reference (also followed by “—Owen”). If Goold omitted parts of the original text in his edition, we have restored them to their rightful place. Additionally, we have attempted to regularize the numbering system Owen employed, which was often imprecise and inconsistent; our order is 1, (1), [1], {1}, and 1st. We have also included various features to aid readers’ comprehension of Owen’s writings, including extensive introductions and outlines by established scholars in the field today, new paragraph breaks marked by a pilcrow (¶), chapter titles and appropriate headings (either entirely new or adapted from Goold), and explanatory footnotes that define archaic or obscure words and point out scriptural and other allusions in the text. When a contents page was not included in the original publication, we have provided one. On the rare occasions when we have added words to the text for readability, we have clearly marked them using square brackets. Having a team of experts involved, along with the benefit of modern online database technology, has also enabled us to make the prodigious effort to identify sources and citations in Owen that Russell and Goold deliberately avoided or were unable to locate for their editions.

Owen did not use only one English translation of the Bible. At various times, he employed the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, or the Authorized Version (KJV), as well as his own paraphrases or translations from the original languages. We have not sought to harmonize his biblical quotations to any single version. Similarly, we have left his Hebrew and Greek quotations exactly as he recorded them, including the unpointed Hebrew text. When it appears that he has misspelled the Hebrew or Greek, we have acknowledged that in a footnote with reference to either Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or Novum Testamentum Graece.

This new edition presents fresh translations of Owen’s works that were originally published in Latin, such as his Θεολογούμενα Παντοδαπά (1661) and A Dissertation on Divine Justice (which Goold published in an amended eighteenth-century translation). It also includes certain shorter works that have never before been collected in one place, such as Owen’s prefaces to other people’s works and many of his letters, with an extensive index to the whole set.

Our hope and prayer in presenting this new edition of John Owen’s complete works is that it will equip and enable new generations of readers to appreciate the spiritual insights he accumulated over the course of his remarkable life. Those with a merely historical interest will find here a testimony to the exceptional labors of one extraordinary figure from a tumultuous age, in a modern and usable critical edition. Those who seek to learn from Owen about the God he worshiped and served will, we trust, find even greater riches in his doctrine of salvation, his passion for evangelism and missions, his Christ-centered vision of all reality, his realistic pursuit of holiness, his belief that theology matters, his concern for right worship and religious freedom, and his careful exegetical engagement with the text of God’s word. We echo the words of the apostle Paul that Owen inscribed on the title page of his book Χριστολογία (1679), “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may win Christ” (Phil. 3:8).

Lee Gatiss

Cambridge, England

Shawn D. Wright

Louisville, Kentucky, United States

Editors’ Introduction

Life in the Midst of Battle: John Owen’s Approach to Sin, Temptation, and the Christian Life

Kelly M. Kapic

Be killing sin or it will be killing you.

John Owen, Of the Mortification of Sin

Why Read John Owen?

Sitting across from me in our London flat with warm tea in her hand and shortbread on the table, my wife had a revelation. During recent conversations we had been praying that God would provide a mentor for me while I was working on my PhD—someone who would ask the hard questions, challenge my thinking and living, and consistently point me to the love of the Father. We sat talking that morning and, in what had become normal language around our home, I began another sentence with, “Do you know what Owen said yesterday?” Stopping me, Tabitha interjected, “You are being mentored. Listen to how you refer to John Owen, as if he were still alive. He is your mentor.”1

She was right. Although Owen had been dead for centuries, I found myself in almost daily dialogue with this prominent Puritan whose thought was serving as the object of my doctoral studies. While recognizing the cultural and historical differences between Owen’s time and my own was of vital importance for my academic research, I was also drawn into a living dialogue with this intriguing man. Sometimes I found myself frustrated with his methods or conclusions, but very often his insights simply captured me. His words would stir me to the point of honest self-examination and an ever-growing appreciation for the glory and love of God. I can recall many a time when I would have to stop reading, stand up, and just walk around for awhile, trying to digest a profound sentence. While a person from another century cannot serve as a replacement for living and breathing fellowship, I have learned the value of listening to the saints of old, and this Puritan theologian is certainly a voice worth hearing. I sometimes think of Dr. John Owen as a perceptive physician who delivers both a terrifying diagnosis and the means of a miraculous cure.

John Owen was born in the year of William Shakespeare’s death, 1616, and his life paralleled an exciting and tumultuous century in Britain.2 Before he died in 1683, Owen had experienced life as an army chaplain, a political insider, vice-chancellor of Oxford, a leading Puritan theologian, and a faithful pastor, father, and husband. He had also known great personal loss. Though he had eleven children with his first wife, only one of them survived beyond adolescence; the one girl who did survive ended up returning to live with her father after her marriage collapsed, and while in his home she died of consumption.3 Such painful experiences cannot help but leave a deep imprint on a person. On the professional level Owen’s career had reached great heights: he was preaching before Parliament, leading Oxford University, and developing friendships with those in the highest positions of authority, including Oliver Cromwell. Yet he also lived through the loss of power and position as his country moved away from a Puritan-influenced government back to a country led by a king who was less than excited about Puritan ideals.4

Throughout the various seasons of his life Owen proved himself a most able author. Amid his extensive writings, which include biblical commentaries and exhaustive (and exhausting!) treatments of doctrines like justification and the atonement, is devotional literature that quickly became beloved. The volume you are reading contains four of his classics on spirituality—although it needs to be said that he viewed all of his discourses as spiritual exercises and not as something void of practical import. In these four particular works we find Owen’s detailed reflections on sin, temptation, and the believer’s call to holiness.

In 1656 Owen first published Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers.5 In 1658 that volume was slightly revised and another short treatise, Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It,6 was also printed. During the time that these two books were published, Owen was still serving as dean of Christ Church, Oxford University, and the substance of both discourses grew out of brief sermons that he delivered during his tenure there. Young students were most likely the bulk of his original audience—Owen had entered Queen’s College, Oxford, as a student at the age of twelve, which was not uncommon for the time.7 One consequence of addressing this youthful audience seems to be that his reflections tend toward the concrete and practical, emphasizing the particular rather than lingering too long on the abstract. Here were young people who were beginning to experience the complexity of sin and self, and Owen was compelled to help.8

Crucial to resisting sin and temptation, according to Owen, was an understanding of what one was fighting. Although written a decade later, Owen’s explorations on these practical subjects are further unpacked in his book, The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin (1667).9 Here Owen focuses on the power of sin not as it exists “out there,” but as it exists within a person. By the time this volume was published, Owen’s context had significantly changed: he had been removed from the academic setting, watched the return of Charles II, and personally witnessed the governmental crackdown on Nonconformist Puritan preachers. But for Owen, circumstances—whether amiable or painful—were not an excuse to stop resisting sin. The call of holiness was a call from God himself, and thus not contingent on the state of affairs in which one finds oneself.

The final years of Owen’s life were filled with hardship—ill health, concerns about the future of the church under the restored monarchy of Charles II, a dour view of the status of holiness in visible church members, ongoing and even heightened anxieties about Roman Catholicism’s rise, political conspiracies against the Crown that came close to implicating him, and the death of his first wife, Mary, in 1677 and his only remaining daughter in 1682, a year before his own passing.10 Through it all, Owen somehow kept writing. Along with a flurry of other treatises he penned in his final years, somewhere along the way Owen composed A Treatise of the Dominion of Sin and Grace, which only saw the light of day five years after his death.11 Perhaps this mature treatise was published posthumously due to difficulties Owen was experiencing in finding printers who were willing to print his works at this late stage in his life.12 Whatever the circumstances, he believed that it was essential for Christians to understand what it means for sin to have dominion and whether or not they had been freed from its dominion—that is, whether or not they were truly believers. Picking up themes that he had addressed in the other three treatises of this volume, the mature Owen stressed the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means whereby a regenerated Christian can effectively put down the rebellion of sin and gain assurance of salvation.13

Christians are called to war against sin. According to Owen, this means they are called to learn the art of battle, which includes understanding the nature of sin, the complexity of the human heart, and the goodness and provision of God. Following a classic stream of orthodox theology, Owen argues that humility is crucial to growth in the Christian life, and proper humility comes from “a due consideration” both of God and of oneself.14 Only from this perspective can one be in a right position to approach the call to holiness.

Knowing Yourself

Owen’s varied experiences, such as working with students (not to mention faculty) and providing pastoral care, gave him ample opportunity for reflection on how sin weaves its way into every aspect of people’s lives. Two particular challenges about human nature that appear in these volumes deserve brief comment: Owen’s attempt to present a holistic view of the human person and his belief that personality differences must be considered when dealing with sin.

Engaging the Whole Person

Contemporary readers may at first glance struggle with Owen’s detailed parsing of human nature and sin, believing that his reflections are dated and irrelevant. However, upon closer examination the reader may begin to recognize that although Owen does not use current labels, he is dealing with very contemporary issues, such as depression, addiction, apathy, and lust.

One of Owen’s concerns was that some people reduced the struggle with sin to a problem centered on the physical body. They had taken the biblical language of the “body of sin” (Rom. 6:6) and inappropriately treated it as a literal reference to physicality. This misunderstanding leads to what Owen considers the monastic “mistake”: believing rigid regiments that yield greater physiological control will eventually diminish the sin that lies in a person.15 For Owen, while the body is important, it is but the instrument for the real problem.

Using classic categories of faculty psychology—the mind, the will, and the affections—Owen consistently attempts to present a holistic perspective of the human person, and this informs his view of sin and sanctification.16 Originally, humanity was created without sin, and thus their mind rightly reflected on the Creator and his creation, their affections properly loved God, and their will followed after the good. However, with the fall, these faculties became disordered. Even after believers are redeemed by God they will continue to struggle with the abiding vestiges of sin that disorient their faculties, a condition that remains throughout their earthly life.17

Sin moves by drawing the mind away from God, enticing the affections and twisting desires, and paralyzing the will, thus stunting any real Christian growth.18 One of the most frightening truths that Owen wants the believer to recognize is that “Your enemy is not only upon you . . . but is in you also.”19 Part of understanding the battle against sin is seeing that the enemy, so to speak, is not only external, but internal, which is why Christians often have conflicting desires within them.20 Most Christians seem unaware of or apathetic about the sin that remains in them, but whether they recognize it or not there is a “living coal continually in their houses,” which, if not properly attended to, will catch their home on fire.21

Owen argues that since the Scriptures often call attention to the “heart” or “soul” of a person and such references tend to be shorthand for the various faculties, to deal with sin the whole person must be engaged.22 Although Owen gives ample attention to each of the faculties, let us focus on the affections as a test case to show the nature of sin and temptation. Far too often Christians working within the Reformed tradition have been guilty of confusing stoic ideals of emotional detachment with maturity in the Christian life. But this Reformed tradition, which Owen self-consciously grows out of, has at its best made significant space for the importance of the affections. As early as the sixteenth century John Calvin, one of the great fathers of the Reformed tradition, saw this confusion and warned against it. Calvin chided those Christians who acted like “new stoics” because they believed that groaning, weeping, sadness, and having deep concerns were signs of sinfulness. According to Calvin such comments tend to grow from “idle men who, exercising themselves more in speculation than in action,” do not understand the pain of this world and the ravages of sin, which the Savior who wept and mourned knew so well.23 The goal of Calvin and of others after him, like Owen, was not the absence of affections, but the presence of rightly informed and directed affections.

Affections are a gift from God to all humanity. Far too often the faculties have been gendered in the church, for example, when people lump rationality with men and emotions with women. In addition to empirical evidence that easily contradicts such hastily drawn stereotypes, one should reject such schemas because all Christians are called to love God with their mind, will, and affections. Healthy affections are crucial to the life of faith, and numbing them cannot be the answer. In Owen’s estimation, because the affections are so important to faithful obedience, Scripture often interchanges the language of heart and affections, for here is “the principal thing which God requires in our walking before him. . . . Save all other things and lose the heart, and all is lost—lost unto all eternity.”24

The goal of the Christian life is not external conformity or mindless action but a passionate love for God informed by the mind and embraced by the will. So the path forward is not to decrease one’s affections but rather to enlarge them and fill them with “heavenly things.” Here one is not trying to escape the painful realities of this life but rather endeavoring to reframe one’s perspective of life around a much larger canvas that encompasses all of reality. To respond to the distorting nature of sin you must set your affections on the beauty and glory of God, the loveliness of Christ, and the wonder of the gospel. Owen thus asks, “Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things . . . what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls?”25 Resisting sin, according to this Puritan divine, comes not by deadening your affections but by awakening them to God himself. Do not seek to empty your cup as a way to avoid sin, but rather seek to fill it up with the Spirit of life so there is no longer room for sin.

Considering Personalities

Part of treating persons as holistic beings is recognizing the similarities and differences among them. With this in mind, it seems strange that “psychology” is so often a negative term among Christians. Certainly people have used this science in a problematic manner at times, reducing human persons to mechanistic behavioral responses without any reference to God. However, many Christians have created problems on the other end by their overly simplistic view of human persons, failing to account for such important factors as physiological distinctions, family backgrounds, and deep-seated socioeconomic impulses. While it is true that all humans are made in God’s image and that everyone is called to resist sin and seek righteousness, these commonalities do not cancel out undeniable particularities. In other words, what does righteousness look like in the lives of real flesh-and-blood people? How does sin tempt people in different ways? In many respects Owen’s four treatises can be read as early modern attempts to explore human psychology as affected by sin and renewed by the Spirit.26

Faithful living does not always look the same. Sensitive pastors have long recognized this, learning the art of taking the wisdom of Scripture and applying it with care to the lives of those they counsel. Cookie-cutter molds simply will not work. In this vein, one reason that Owen consistently calls his readers to understand their own temperaments is because this will help them better appreciate how sin and temptation arise in their own lives. He recognizes that some people are by birth and experience “earthy,” while others are “naturally gentle,” and still others have “passionate” dispositions. The challenge for all is to learn about their own constitution. Owen states, “He who watches not this thoroughly, who is not exactly skilled in the knowledge of himself, will never be disentangled from one temptation or another all his days.”27

According to this Puritan pastor, there is no temperament that is free from temptation, and the trick is to be aware of the threats that are easily overlooked. For example, those who are naturally gentle and pleasant may be surprised to find themselves far down a path that they should have courageously departed from long ago. Such a person may, for instance, turn a deaf ear to slander or a blind eye to injustice because acknowledging these wrongs might require the person to act courageously. Although it would be easier to mind his own business, he may need to risk discomfort by standing up for those mocked or being willing to express righteous anger in the face of discrimination. Others who tend toward the “earthy” may rightly uphold what is now commonly called authenticity, but in the process they foster “selfishness” and “harsh thoughts of others.” We all have “peculiar lusts” due to our particular constitution, education, or prejudice, and such things have “deep rooting and strength in them.”28 Satan tends to attack us according to our particular personalities, moving against a confident person much differently than an anxious one, but tempting both nonetheless. Thus, we must learn our dispositions, for in so doing we are more prepared to avoid the stealthy arrows directed at us.

A persistent danger among Christians is that we confuse certain personalities with sanctification, thereby creating an inaccurate hierarchy within the kingdom of God. In fact, Owen believes that because of our various backgrounds and temperaments, it is very hard to identify the most faithful Christians, since looks can be deceiving. He writes, “Remember that of many of the best Christians, the worst is known and seen. Many who keep up precious communion with God do yet oftentimes, by their natural tempers of freedom or passion, not carry so glorious appearances as others who perhaps come short of them in grace and the power of godliness.”29

Not only can appearances be misleading, but people in positions of leadership in the church often suffer greater falls than the average congregation member. When considering countless examples of the saints in Scripture (e.g., Noah, David, Hezekiah), Owen concludes that great “eruptions of actual sin” often occur not in “the lowest form or ordinary sort of believers” but in people who have in the past “had a peculiar eminency in them on the account of their walking with God in their generation.”30 Past faithfulness is not a protection against present dangers.

In this life there is no escaping the challenges of temptation, and thus all—young and old, pastor and parishioner, poor and rich, wise and simple—must commit themselves to battle against sin. Owen exhorts, “Be acquainted, then, with thine own heart: though it be deep, search it; though it be dark, inquire into it; though it give all its distempers other names than what are their due, believe it not.”31 Do not justify your own particular sin, but seek to recognize it so that you might fight against it with all your strength. Although sin and temptation affect everyone differently, none can escape the constant onslaught. Christians are called to wage war against this enemy, knowing that there are only two options: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”32 While battlefield language may sound extreme to our ears, that is how Owen—following the Bible—conceives of this struggle. With this in mind, the only hope Owen can promise comes not through further self-examination but by embracing the love and provision of God.

Knowing Your God

Affirming the importance of honest introspection does not blind Owen to the fact that this exercise will lead a person to despair if it is not also paralleled with a study of the grace of God. Since sin entered the world, it has become challenging for people to rightly view themselves, God, and his work. We are prone to have “hard thoughts” of God that tend to keep us from turning to him.33 Owen’s goal is not to have people remain focused on their sin but rather to embrace the redemption accomplished in Christ. The aim is not despair but freedom for what Owen often calls “gospel obedience.”34 Obedience rightly understood is always a response to God’s love.

A crucial work of the mind in the process of sanctification is the consistent consideration of God and his amazing grace.35 This does not mean considering God as an abstract metaphysical principle. Rather, the Christian meditates upon him and with him. This distinction makes all the difference, placing the discussion within the framework of relationality rather than mere rationality. Owen’s challenge is most instructive: “when we would undertake thoughts and meditations of God, his excellencies, his properties, his glory, his majesty, his love, his goodness, let it be done in a way of speaking unto God, in a deep humiliation . . . in a way of prayer and praise—speaking unto God.”36 The invitation here is not to impersonal theological studies but rather to life-changing encounters with Yahweh.

One of the great promises of God is that he will preserve his people. In fact, the idea of the “perseverance of the saints” is frequently misunderstood, according to Owen, for so often discussion about remaining in the faith focuses on human efforts, as if it is up to us to avoid losing our salvation. In truth, the Christian hope rests not ultimately upon our own diligence but on God’s faithfulness.37 It is God, not us, who will ultimately persevere, and that is why he is able to promise us eternal life: “where the promise is, there is all this assistance. The faithfulness of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the power of the Spirit, all are engaged in our preservation.”38 Christians can be confident about their growth in sanctification and eternal security because they are confident in the God who promises it.

Ever-deepening communion with God occurs as the Spirit draws us to the Father through the Son.39 The Father will allow none to be snatched from his hand, the Son incarnate is a truly sympathetic high priest who is the lover of our souls, and the Spirit applies the atoning work of Christ to us. Thus, Owen reminds believers to keep these truths in mind as they face temptation, bringing their “lust to the gospel” lest they lose sight of the sufficient sacrifice and restorative grace found in God’s work. Owen exclaims, “What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace?”40 Notice that the love is preexistent, the blood shed, and the grace extended. The believer is not working to secure these realities but seeking to live in light of them. Christians stand in the shadow of the cross, having experienced the tender mercy of God. They aim not to convince God that they are worthy of his love but to grow in their knowledge of and fellowship with him. It is through this ever-growing communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit that the believer is most able to resist sin and temptation. “Let a soul exercise itself to a communion with Christ in the good things of the gospel—pardon of sin, fruits of holiness, hope of glory, peace with God, joy in the Holy Ghost, dominion over sin—and he shall have a mighty preservative against all temptations.”41

The Work of Sanctification

How should the Christian understand the work of sanctification? Is the call of believers to holiness God’s work or their own? There are two extremes often found in the church when dealing with these questions. On the one hand, there are those who seem to believe that we are saved by grace and sanctified by works: here, grace is problematically reduced to the initial work of salvation. On the other hand, in an effort to avoid “works righteousness,” others tend to collapse justification and sanctification; the danger here is that the biblical call to active, faithful obedience by the believer can be nullified and inappropriate passivity can set in. Rather than these two extremes, Owen follows the more traditional Reformed perspective that upholds another model of sanctification.42

True and lasting resistance to sin comes not through willpower and self-improvement but through the Spirit, who empowers believers with a knowledge and love of God. Throughout his writings Owen is always quick to highlight the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.43 Not only does the Spirit of God bring life to those who are dead in sin, thus causing a new birth, but he also continues the work of God in the renewing of that person in the image of Christ. The fundamental difference between Owen’s proposal and self-help programs is that he believes that only as the Spirit communicates the grace and love of the Father to us can we experience genuine relief.44Mortification of sin is “the gift of Christ” to believers, and this is given by the Spirit of the Son.45 Efforts apart from the Spirit do not bring sanctification, even if they do produce changed behavior. Although the Spirit often uses beneficial activities such as “fasting and watching,” rituals and human effort without the Spirit cannot ultimately bring liberation from sin and temptation.46

So is the work of sanctification God’s work or our work? Or is it some combination of the two?47 Maybe such questions are themselves problematic. John Murray, writing several centuries after Owen, fairly communicates the kind of approach Owen employs, although Murray here states it more concisely:

God’s working in us [in sanctification] is not suspended because we work, nor our working suspended because God works. Neither is the relation strictly one of co-operation as if God did his part and we did ours so that the conjunction or coordination of both produced the required result. God works in us and we also work. But the relation is that because God works we work.48

Owen’s own view is similar, seeing sanctification as the work of God in and through the life of the believer. This is not passivity but active living empowered by the Spirit of life.49

Two concepts commonly appear in early Reformed approaches to sanctification: mortification and vivification. Building on the language and imagery of Colossians 3:9–10, the idea of mortification was understood as a putting off of the old man, and vivification was conceived as the reality of being made alive by the Spirit.50 Although the term “vivification” is found less often in Owen than in earlier theologians like John Calvin or the renowned Puritan Thomas Goodwin, the concept is clearly present.51 These twin ideas of sanctification require not only the shedding of sin but also renewal in grace. A practical example of how this works out may prove helpful.

Consider a man who is struggling with inappropriate sexual thoughts about one of his female coworkers. What does holiness look like in this case? Very often Christians have a truncated view of sanctification that stops far too short of true righteousness. Although it would be a good thing for this man to get to the point that he no longer looks at this woman as an object of lust, that is not all that is hoped for in sanctification. Rather, in the power of the Spirit the goal is to move to a life-affirming position. Thus, the objective is not the absence of sinful thoughts about this woman but the presence of a godly appreciation for her. Under normal circumstances this man should not simply try to deny her existence by avoiding her but rather begin treating her with dignity, offering words that build her up instead of dehumanizing her with his thoughts. Ultimately lust will be replaced by genuine and appropriate respect and love. Similarly, the goal of dealing with gossip is not merely the absence of slander (which is the good work of mortification) but eventually the creating of an environment of encouragement, peace, and trust (further fruits of the Spirit’s enlivening presence and work). Following the trajectory of thought in theologians like Calvin and Owen, sanctification involves both putting sin to death and becoming free to love and obey.

Conclusion

We have briefly explored a few themes from Owen’s thought that might help prepare readers for what they are about to encounter in his writings on sin, mortification, and temptation. Several things will quickly become apparent, such as recognizing that Owen’s language, sentence structure, and sensitivities are not modern. As you read, do not be surprised to feel a certain amount of historical distance between yourself and Owen—to deny such differences would be naïve and problematic. The goal is not to create romantic views of the past, hoping to usher Christians back to some sort of “pure” seventeenth-century setting. Owen makes it perfectly clear that the power of sin and Satan were just as real then as now. Believers should read Owen not to return to the past but to gain insight into how they might more faithfully live in the present and prepare for the future.

“Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”52 Culture has changed, but sinful human nature has not. For centuries Owen’s works have challenged Christians to think afresh about how they face the reality of sin and temptation. Now Owen serves yet another generation of believers, calling us to wake from sleepy and apathetic attitudes toward holiness, demanding that we engage in honest self-reflection. But he doesn’t stop there, for he intends to excite in us a renewed sense of the tender mercy of God, who delights to commune with his people.

John Owen’s Context, His Opponents, and the Gospel Solution to Indwelling Sin

Shawn D. Wright

Historians regularly display one of two tendencies. In an attempt to make sense of a particular era, they either emphasize the similarities of that era with what preceded and followed it or they stress the dissimilarities (i.e., the uniqueness of that movement). The English Puritan movement has been subject to both approaches. On the one hand, fueled by the work of several scholars such as Richard A. Muller and Carl R. Trueman, historians of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritanism argue that we must seek to understand the continuities—as well as the discontinuities—of this period of thought with the centuries of medieval Catholic thought that predated it. Puritanism was not only a child of the Protestant Reformation. It was also the grandchild of medieval scholastic thought.53 On the other hand, noting the unique features of the English Puritan movement—and indeed searching for what exactly was unique about it—has occupied some historians. And, of course, English Puritanism was, by definition, unique. It was English, it had a unique genesis in the English Reformation of the 1520s and 30s, it was complicated by the monarchy’s leadership of ecclesiastical affairs,54 it had a particular relationship with the established Church of England, and it ultimately failed to obtain its goal, which was the establishment of a purely reformed Church of England.

Historians generally acknowledge the renewed emphasis on personal piety and holiness that marked the Puritan movement as a whole.55 Some, though, have incorrectly attempted to understand English Protestant pastors’ renewed emphasis on personal holiness as proof of the fact that they had diverged from the Calvinistic doctrine they had inherited. Two instances will suffice to show this tendency.

Perry Miller, one of the scholars driving the renaissance of Puritan studies in the twentieth century, posited that Puritans differed from the mainline Reformed tradition. Whereas Calvin and his ilk stressed the mystery of God—especially the mystery of his predestinating decree—the Puritans erected a covenantal scheme to soothe the emotional and intellectual difficulties of hoping in God, especially when he might not have elected one to salvation.56 Now, according to their novel covenant theology, the individual could basically determine his or her own salvation by meeting the requirements God set forth in the covenant. According to Miller, even though the Puritans claimed to be Calvinists, they were essentially Arminians.57 All of this was driven by their existential need to know that they were Christians. The quest for assurance of salvation combined with their novel convenantalism drove the Puritans to abandon the rigorous predestinarianism of Calvin.58

R. T. Kendall also stressed the novelty of English Puritanism vis-à-vis its Reformed heritage. His interpretation was more nuanced than Miller’s, but in essence he argued that everything revolved around the question of assurance of salvation. Since John Calvin (1509–1564) believed that Christ died for all persons in the same way, Kendall maintained, Calvin told doubting souls to look to Jesus for assurance. He died for them and they could find solace in him. Yet, things changed because of the thought of Theodore Beza (1519–1605), Calvin’s heir. The Puritans—heirs of Beza’s rigid Calvinism that was promoted in England by William Perkins (1558–1602)—denied that Christ died for everyone. Since Jesus only died for the elect, one could not indiscriminately look to him when doubting one’s eternal status. Instead, the only way to know for certain that one was a Christian was to evidence the fruits of the Spirit and good works in one’s life. In other words, one’s life had to be changed; then one could be certain of one’s salvation. Hence—according to Kendall—the plethora of Puritan treatises on how to find assurance of salvation.59

The critiques of these nouveau interpretations are legion.60 Not only do thinkers such as Miller and Kendall at times make simple errors of theological judgment but they also fail to understand that the English Puritan movement was in a long line of Roman Catholic and Protestant thinkers who took the importance of pursuing holiness and sanctification very seriously. The Puritan movement did not arise ex nihilo, as if no Christians before them strove for holiness. Such a perspective cannot make any sense of the centuries of ascetic piety and monastic efforts regnant in Catholicism.61Nor does it give due attention to the fact that the progenitor of Protestantism, Martin Luther (1483–1546), not only wrote on justification sola fide (“by faith alone”) but also composed theses on sanctification and stressed that Christians must live lives marked by holiness.62 Closer to the Puritan movement, John Calvin stressed that those who are justified by faith alone will live lives that are marked by obedience. The Genevan noted, “Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify.”63 Calvin’s successor in Geneva, Beza, also stressed the necessity of personal holiness.64 All that is to say, the English Puritans of the seventeenth century were in a long line of Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed Protestants who believed that God’s word called individual Christians to actively and aggressively resist sin and pursue righteousness.

Owen and Practical Divinity

Owen also stood in a long line of English divines whose work has been labeled an exercise in “practical divinity.”65 This theological emphasis existed not first and foremost for academics but for laity who, initially, were coming out of centuries of Catholic teaching and needed instruction in the faith that they could understand. Perkins stood as the paragon of this first-generation, Elizabethan practical divinity movement.66Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) shone as a bright light in the next generation.67John Bunyan (1628–1688), whose The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) exemplified the practical divinity movement and was published at the urging of Owen,68 and Richard Baxter (1615–1691), the sometime opponent of Owen, were later representatives of this varied movement. Although Owen himself could pen intricate theological argumentation, sometimes in Latin, he also exemplified the practical component of the practical divinity in the four treatises in this volume, which concentrate on what individual Christians must know and do in order to live a life that is both comfortable to themselves and honoring to God.

Overall, practical divinity centered on a cluster of truths related to personal holiness and personal assurance of salvation. Kelly Kapic and Randall Gleason summarize this emphasis as follows: “The fundamental nature of spirituality within Puritanism is found in its insistence that the converted soul must go beyond conversion to actual holiness of life.”69 The Christian life for English Puritans consisted in a “fight,” a “friction-filled” lifetime experience due to the opposition even a regenerated Christian’s indwelling sin offers to killing sin and being made into Christ’s image.70 David Hall posits that “devotion was the beating heart of the practical divinity”; indeed, “in its more private or inward aspects, devotion was about the joy of experiencing the presence of a loving Christ.”71 One’s assurance of salvation often was linked with one’s sanctification.72 This culminated in a “subculture of strenuous action” in Puritanism,73 in Owen’s insistence that one must vigorously exercise grace in order to be certain of one’s salvation,74 and in an increase of devotional literature in English Puritanism that was the envy of Continental Calvinistic churches.75

Some have suggested that the practical divinity movement arose due to the Puritans’ disenfranchisement from ecclesiastical and political positions of power. Since they could no longer influence the established church or the monarchy, they fled inward to their souls and emphasized heart religion.76 Of course, the Puritans’ ecclesial and political contexts influenced what they did. Whatever the permutations of external causes such as these and the internal compunction brought about by word and Spirit, what we know is that the Puritan movement as a whole was marked by stressing the application of truth to life. In this, they were not novel, as we have seen. They were driven to emphasize the Christian’s responsibility to action in sanctification primarily by what they read in the Bible.

Owen and Scripture

Owen—as most of his treatises suggest—regularly read and meditated on the Bible. Indeed, Owen’s scholastic theological training included reading the Christian Scripture of the Old and New Testaments.77 Each of the treatises before us represents an extended meditation on a particular verse, with much more biblical support ushered in to assist the readers. Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers treats Romans 8:13, “If ye by the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live.”78Of Temptation unpacks Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.”79The Nature of Indwelling Sin is founded on Romans 7:21, “I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me.”80 And The Dominion of Sin and Grace expounds Romans 6:14, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law but under grace.”81 This confirms Hall’s assessment that “the ministers who endorsed the practical divinity based everything they preached and wrote on the Bible, most commonly by organizing their sermons around a text and anchoring systematic statements in Scripture.”82 Although Hall was alluding to an earlier generation of Puritan divines, his assessment rings true in Owen’s case as well.

The Christian Scripture played a preeminent role in shaping Owen’s worldview. As he encouraged his readers to mortify the flesh, to beware of the danger of falling into temptation, to be on their guard against the pernicious indwelling sin that plagued them, and to ensure they were under Christ’s, not sin’s, dominion, Owen was fundamentally saying what the Bible was saying. One might quibble with him about the stress he placed on the Christian’s obligation to overcome sin and temptation, but that would be to read these four treatises in isolation of everything else he penned. To take just one of his treatises as an example, in the same year (1667) that he published Indwelling Sin, Owen brought to press Brief Instruction in the Worship of God, Indulgence and Toleration Considered, and Peace-Offering, In an Apology and Humble Plea for Indulgence. Owen wrote a great deal on sin and temptation. But he wrote a lot more than just that! Nonetheless, regarding Christians’ pursuit of holiness, Owen believed that God’s word needed to be explained and applied to his readers for their spiritual edification.

Owen and His Readers

Owen had particular audiences in view when he composed these treatises. Kelly Kapic has reminded us that both Mortification and Temptation originated with addresses Owen gave to young men, mere teenagers, who were students at Oxford University in the 1650s.83 Times may have changed, but human nature since our first parents’ fall into sin has not. Just like college undergraduates in our day regularly indulge sin, so did students in Owen’s day. For this reason, Owen commented in the second Oxford treatise,

Men come not out of their temptation without wounds, burnings, and scars. I know not any place in the world where there is more need of pressing this exhortation than in this place. Go to our several colleges, inquire for such and such young men; what is the answer in respect of many? “Ah! Such a one was very hopeful for a season; but he fell into ill company, and he is quite lost.”84

Owen preached and wrote his Oxford treatises initially to adolescent men in need of exhortation and guidance in their sanctification.

Indwelling Sin came to press in the first decade of Charles II’s reign, a period that saw the decline of Owen’s public ministry in the realm. Dominion of Sin and Grace was composed during the final years of his life, an exceptionally tumultuous period for the aged thinker and minister. Owen scattered lines throughout this treatise lamenting the evil times in which he lived as well as the low state of piety in the lives of the majority of professing believers. Owen felt, in this sense, the experience of defeat toward the end of his life.85 Similar to his expressions of grief for the church’s generally low level of devotion to Christ and holiness throughout his Nature and Causes of Apostasy (1676), Dominion shows the elderly Owen concerned about the church he must soon leave. He laments that “many churches and professors at this day . . . are fallen under many spiritual decays.” Their spiritual state is so lax that “it is greatly to be feared that God will . . . withdraw his presence from them.”86 During the early years of the restored monarchy (1667), Owen feared the same thing, noting in Indwelling Sin “the number of apostates in these latter days.”87 Later, while warning that overlooked sin opened the door wide to future patterns of rebellion, Owen allowed that some “apostatize from a profession of any continuance, such as our days abound with.”88 Fueled by his meditations on Scripture and addressing particular contexts, then, Owen wrote to particular audiences.

Owen and Roman Catholicism

Perhaps surprisingly, Owen regularly critiqued Catholicism in these four treatises on overcoming sin and temptation. He especially opposed Roman Catholicism’s failed efforts at subduing the flesh and promoting godliness among its adherents. “Rome” and “the papists” occur frequently in these essays, demonstrating Owen’s concern about the inroads he feared the Roman Catholics were making in England in his day. Rome’s errors also gave Owen a foil for his Reformed understanding of the means of sanctification.89

Owen consistently set his sights on showing the errors in Roman Catholicism. For instance, in Mortification he contrasted the biblical, Holy Spirit–wrought work of mortification with that of “Popish religion.” All the Catholic actions toward mortifying sin—from their “rough garments” to their “vows, orders, fastings, penances”—are built on a faulty foundation. None of their works hold any value, for “their laboring” will not result in true mortification.90 Since mortification is the work of believers in Christ alone, all the efforts of “the Roman synagogue” amount to nothing. Indeed, these “choicest formalists” drive “Indians to baptism,” as if that marked indigenous people out as holy to the Lord.91 Owen had his sights on Catholicism again in Temptation, the companion volume to Mortification. When temptations come, one must think deeply about Christ and what he has done for sinners. Indeed, one must lay hold of “Christ crucified, his love therein, and what from thence he suffered for sin.” This faith actually empowers one to withstand temptations. However, “the papists” have lost the ability to withstand temptation, for they have lost Christ. “They will sign themselves with the sign of the cross, or make aerial crosses; and by virtue of that work done, think to scare away the devil,” says Owen. They neglect “to act faith on Christ crucified,” which is the only way to “overcome that wicked one (1 Pet. 5:9).”92

Similarly, Owen took issue with Roman Catholic malpractice in Indwelling Sin. Roman devotion demonstrates Catholics’ ignorance “of the righteousness of Christ, for the subduing and mortifying of sin.”93 They fail to use the means of grace God has given his people for fighting sin within them. Instead, the papacy stresses “their hours of prayer, fastings; their . . . cloistering themselves; their pilgrimages, penances, and self-torturing discipline.” These serve as examples of the “self-invented design of men ignorant of the righteousness of God, to give a check to this power of indwelling sin.”94

Owen’s critique of Catholicism continued in Dominion of Sin and Grace. Christ crucified served as the chief means a Christian has to fight against the renegade sin in his or her life. Not knowing Christ crucified, Catholics rely on “discipline and penances.” They make “images of Christ crucified” which they “adore, embrace, mourn over, and expect great virtue from,” but they receive nothing, for they do not know Jesus and receive no aid from him.95 Owen said, “nothing but the death of Christ for us, will be the death of sin in us.”96 By contrast, the papacy stands in the place of the Jews of old, “who being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and not submitting thereunto, went about variously to establish their own righteousness.”97

It may surprise us that Owen so stressed the dangers of Catholicism, especially since by the time of his adulthood England had officially been a Protestant nation for over a century. Were his warnings just the ravings of an embittered man lashing out against an imaginary adversary safely ensconced on the European continent? No. Owen was concerned with the doctrinal deviations of Rome.98 He also had reasons to fear that Catholic thought might be gaining power within the upper echelons of English society. Glancing at some of the key instances of Roman incursion into England toward the end of Owen’s life will demonstrate the validity of his concern.

By and large Puritan hopes to reform the Church of England were dashed with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660. Insult was added to injury with the ejection of over 1,700 ministers with Puritan sympathies (20 percent of the Church of England’s clergy) from their pulpits on account of their refusal to submit to Parliament’s draconian anti-Puritan laws beginning in 1660 and culminating in the Act of Uniformity of 1662.99 These tumultuous realities affected Owen as well.100 As his reign went on, Charles’s pro-Roman policies became clearer. Michael P. Winship explains that “in 1672, on his own authority, [Charles] simply suspended the laws against nonconformity for Protestants and Catholics alike with a Declaration of Indulgence.”101 Although it was short-lived, due to Parliament’s intervention, the Declaration betrayed Charles’s pro-Catholic stance. It fueled speculations that the highest seat in the land was occupied by a man who leaned in a Roman direction.102 In many ways the anti-Catholic frenzy reached its climax with the so-called Popish Plot of 1678, a fiction created to give the impression that Catholics were plotting Charles’s assassination in the hopes that France would be able to invade and conquer England, Scotland, and Ireland in the midst of the chaos following the regicide.103 Owen’s final years were marked by the turmoil surrounding Parliament’s schemes to exclude Charles’s brother James from assuming the throne since James was openly Catholic.104 Owen entered glory in 1683 not having accomplished the reformation of the church that he had hoped for.105 He felt justified in fearing Rome.

Owen and Antinomianism

Antinomianism troubled Puritans because it was embodied by a group who claimed to be Calvinistic in doctrine yet abandoned Calvinism’s—and the Bible’s—emphasis on holy living.106 However, difficulties of definition abound. Joel Beeke and Mark Jones warn that

defining “antinomianism” in general is fraught with difficulty. Defining “antinomianism” in the context of seventeenth-century Britain is even harder, in part because as the century wore on the term became a hostile epithet, and theological polemic does not always lend itself to fair assessments of one’s opponents.107