Sermons and Tracts from the Civil Wars (1646–1649) (Volume 18) E-Book

John Owen

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

Seitenzahl: 1179

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Edited for Modern Readers, These Wartime Sermons from John Owen Explore God's Judgment and Sovereignty Regarded as one of the greatest theologians in history, 17th-century pastor John Owen wrote extensively on holiness, Scripture, the Trinity, missions, and ecclesiology. His classic works—which have inspired Christian thinkers including Charles Spurgeon, J. I. Packer, and John Piper—remain influential, but until now haven't been offered in an easy-to-read collection. The Complete Works of John Owen is a 40-volume project that brings together all of Owen's original theological writing, reformatted for modern readers. Volume 18 includes 5 sermons that Owen delivered at a time of civil war, addressing matters such as providence and toleration. Together they outline his vision for a lasting settlement for both church and state. With extensive introductions by editor Martyn C. Cowan, this volume also includes outlines, footnotes, and other supporting resources. - Edited and Formatted for Modern Readers: Presents Owen's original writing, newly typeset with insightful introductions, outlines, text breaks, headings, and footnotes - Part of the Complete Works of John Owen Project: This collection, which includes material not previously published, will release 40 hardcover volumes over a number of years - Perfect for Churches and Schools: Written for students, pastors, theologians, and those interested in the sermons of John Owen

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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 18

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

John Owen

Introduced and Edited by

Martyn C. Cowan

General Editors

Lee Gatiss and Shawn D. Wright

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

© 2025 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.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked GNV are from the 1599 Geneva Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

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

First printing 2025

Printed in China

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6047-7 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8609-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8607-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Owen, John, 1616–1683 author. | Cowan, Martyn C., editor.

Title: Sermons and tracts from the Civil Wars (1646–1649) / John Owen ; introduced and edited by Martyn C. Cowan ; general editors, Lee Gatiss and Shawn D. Wright.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2024] | Series: The complete works of John Owen ; volume 18 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024007310 (print) | LCCN 2024007311 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433560477 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781433586071 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433586095 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Sermons, English—17th century.

Classification: LCC BX5201 .O795 2024  (print) | LCC BX5201  (ebook) | DDC 252/.059—dc23/eng/20240812

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024007310

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024007311

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-11-08 08:54:59 AM

Volume 18

Contents

Works Preface

Editor’s Introduction

Outlines

A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy, in Sending the Means of Grace to Undeserved Sinners

Appended Tracts:

A Short Defensative about Church Government, Toleration and Petitions about These Things

A Country Essay for the Practice of Church Government There

Ebenezer: A Memorial for the Deliverance of Essex, County, and Committee

A Sermon Preached to the Honorable House of Commons, in Parliament Assembled: On January 31

Appended Tract:

Of Toleration: And the Duty of the Magistrate, about Religion

Οὐρανῶν Οὐρανία: The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth

Human Power Defeated

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

Editor’s Introduction

Martyn C. Cowan

Owen the Preacher

John Owen had the high view of preaching that was typical of the later English Puritans, and his sermon style involved the threefold method of doctrine, reason, and use.1 We generally find him “opening” the text by carefully exegeting its context, grammar, and vocabulary. He then “divides” the text, a process whereby he identifies key words and phrases and from which he derives or “raises” the doctrine(s) to be expounded. Owen then concisely states a doctrinal proposition in what he often terms an “observation” before establishing it by recourse to multiple scriptural proof texts and supporting argumentative heads he terms “reasons.” In this part of his exposition, Owen frequently resolves possible objections to the doctrine by way of confirmation. The third and final element of this expository method involves him applying the doctrine under consideration according to certain observations of its use(s). This can produce highly complex sermons with multiple points and subpoints.

Even in his day, Owen’s methodology was ridiculed by some detractors. For example, Samuel Parker scathingly criticized the second sermon in this volume, originally published in 1648 as Ebenezer. The theme of the sermon was on a particular type of song from the book of Psalms, and Owen managed to raise over twenty doctrinal observations from the text and applied them in some twenty-five different uses. Parker mocked Owen’s ability “to raise Edification out of a pair of Bagpipes.”2 The eighteenth-century Dissenter Robert Robinson also condemned the method employed in that sermon as “abstruse” since Owen resorted to “almost one hundred and fifty observations, uses, reasons, &c.”3 Despite such criticisms, the formal structure of Owen’s sermons provided both him and his hearers a shared set of expectations. Even those who differed from him on many matters recognized the power of his pulpit ministry. For example, Anthony Wood recalled the impact of Owen’s preaching on many of his hearers:

He had a very graceful behaviour in the Pulpit, an eloquent Elocution, a winning and insinuating deportment, and could by the persuasion of his oratory, in conjunction with some other outward advantages, move and wind the affections of his admiring Auditory almost as he pleased.4

Owen provided a sophisticated rationale of his underlying theology of preaching in Πνευματολογια: Or, A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit (1674) and called on all preachers to familiarize themselves with how the Holy Spirit made the preaching of the word of God “instrumental for the effecting of this new birth and life.”5 This was, of course, something that he himself had experienced when sermon gadding in London in 1642. On one such occasion, he received assurance of salvation through the “plain familiar discourse” of an otherwise unknown country preacher.6 He articulated his high view of preaching in a sermon preached at an ordination service in September 1682: “And I will give you pastors according to my heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15). He contended that the “first duty” of a pastor was to feed the flock by means of diligent preaching. Pastors were to preach with a powerful “unction” that came from prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God.7 It was essential that the preacher placed himself under the authority of God’s word: “I think, truly, that no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart”; and “it is an easier thing to bring our heads to preach than our hearts to preach.”8 True preaching of the gospel would, he believed, be “accompanied by a powerful persuasive efficacy.”9

All this is, in many ways, unsurprising to those who have some familiarity with Owen. However, any careful reader of Owen’s sermons will quickly come to see that much of his preaching is best described as “prophetic” because, adopting the posture of a prophet, he explains how the unique and undeserved blessings that his hearers have experienced place on them the obligation to respond in faith and obedience, individually, corporately, and nationally.10 Often there is lamentation because such a response is not forthcoming, and this led him to issue serious warnings of judgment to come. Many of the sermons in these volumes sought to bring a prophetic word to bear on contemporary religiopolitical events and consequently employ oblique discourse in which commentary on contemporary political events is couched in the language of the stories, tropes, and metaphors of the Bible.11 This allowed for the “oblique discourse” in which criticism of contemporary political events was voiced by couching it in scriptural metaphor. As Kevin Killeen explains, in the early modern sermon, “the biblical idiom was its own and sufficient political comment: a measured, subtle, and precise medium of criticism and a vocabulary of political exordium.”12

The corpus of Owen’s sermonic material is diverse. It includes a number of stand-alone public sermons that Owen prepared for publication, usually in response to an invitation to publish. Most of the sermon-genre works that Owen prepared for the press were delivered between 1646 and 1659, with one notable exception being An Humble Testimony (1681). However, there is also extensive sermonic material that emerged in other forms. Many of the works contained in the other volumes in this project emerged from Owen’s pulpit ministry. From the early days of his ministry in Essex, he was adapting his preaching for publication in the form of tracts: for example, The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished (1644) was “resolved from the ordinary pulpit method into its own principles.”13 This was a habit that he would continue throughout his life. For example, well-known works such as Communion with God (1657) and Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656) found their origin in Owen’s pulpit ministry in Oxford. The former took a number of years, and some persuasion from others, to find its way into print. The latter came about because Owen’s preaching on mortification had enjoyed “some comfortable success,” and he published the material “with such additions and alterations as I should judge necessary.”14 In it, Gribben has detected “the strategies of the pulpit” in Owen’s “pithy soundbites.”15 His Practical Exposition of the 130th Psalm (1669) has obvious links to his preaching from the later part of the decade, but so too does his monumental commentary on Hebrews since during its composition Owen was engaged in some extended sermon series on the book. Even at the end of his life, we see numerous connections between his sermons on death from the autumn of 1680 and his preface to Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ (1684).16 Consequently, it is important to recognize that the genesis of much of Owen’s work lies in a pastoral context in which he was engaged in the time-consuming labor of preaching.

Many of Owen’s sermons have come down to us from notes taken by auditors.17From the mid-1660s, Sir John Hartopp (ca. 1637–1722) took shorthand notes that he later wrote out in notebooks, producing a record that Gribben describes as often being “detailed and compelling.”18 The extant corpus of sermons contains well over one hundred sermon texts.19Many of the posthumously published sermons appeared in the 1721 collection edited by the Independent minister John Asty (1675–1730).20 These were augmented by Thirteen Sermons Preached on Various Occasions (1756).21The Scottish Presbyterian minister William Goold (1815–1897) added further unpublished sermons to his nineteenth-century edition of Owen’s works (1850–1855).

This volume covers Owen’s preaching to the Long Parliament and its Rump—including his most (in)famous sermon delivered the day after the regicide—as well as a thanksgiving sermon held in London on the occasion of the defeat of the Levellers. Two of these sermons were first published with appended tracts dealing with matters pertaining to the debates about the nature of the postwar church settlement, and these are also included. By the end of the time frame covered in this volume, Owen’s role as a spokesman for the new revolutionary regime is evident, something confirmed by his appointment as preacher to the new executive arm of government, the Council of State. He also delivered a further parliamentary sermon in June 1649, but this is not extant.22 What is included in this volume is, of course, only a very limited selection of Owen’s preaching between 1646 and 1649, and one that is restricted to sermons delivered on the national stage. During this time, Owen was also engaged in parish ministry in rural Essex. In the parish of Coggeshall, Owen was preaching to, perhaps, some two thousand people at public worship.23

Some of these sermons have an obvious timeless quality and edifying character to them. Others are very much of a historical moment that has now passed. The utility of the former is clear, and the reader may derive immediate benefit from many of the sermons, especially those from his ministry to dissenting congregations seeking to be faithful in hard and challenging days. The latter might have less obvious relevance, but actually, as we strain to hear Owen preach, in a way so unfamiliar to the modern ear, these sermons have much to teach the contemporary church.

Three lessons stand out. First, the corporate application of Owen’s preaching markedly contrasts the individualism of much modern preaching. These sermons remind us of how a preacher may address his auditors, not simply as members of the congregation but also as citizens of the nation. Second, there is an ever-present providentialism in the sermons. Undoubtedly, for many seventeenth-century preachers, there was, it appears, an overconfidence in the ability to interpret and apply the lessons of providence. That said, if contemporary preaching makes no careful, humble, and judicious attempt to interpret providence, then the people of God will be impoverished. There are still national and congregational, familial and individual blessings that ought to be, in Owen’s language, improved, and there are similar types of warnings whose call should be heeded. Finally, in Owen’s sermons we see what a pervasive influence one’s eschatology can exercise over every aspect of thought and practice. It is a mistake to think that eschatology may be treated as a discrete isolated area of doctrine of, perhaps, only secondary importance. In Owen, we see how a preacher may be enthused and emboldened by his end-times convictions and consequently persevere even in the face of opposition and government-sponsored hostility. In light of this, we should endeavor to have a proper eschatological perspective permeate the preaching ministry of the church. If our preaching was less individualistic, recovered the application of providence, and declared more of the end-times realities of the gospel, then it would surely speak with greater prophetic clarity in our own days.

A Vision of Unchangeable Free Mercy

The Context of Owen’s First Parliamentary Fast Sermon

As the newly appointed “minister of the gospel” at Coggeshall, Essex, Owen was invited to preach before the Long Parliament at its monthly fast on Wednesday, April 29, 1646. The other preacher chosen for that day was to be the London Presbyterian minister James Nalton (1600–1662). Owen had been nominated by the member of Parliament for Tamworth, Sir Peter Wentworth (1593–1675), and the member of Parliament for Hythe, the soldier Thomas Westrowe (1616–1653).24Wentworth was “keenly interested in religious matters” and was regarded as an Erastian because of his commitment to the state’s role in controlling and regulating the church.25 He was active in nominating preachers and, as such, may not necessarily have known Owen personally.26 The other nominator, Westrowe, had, like Owen, been a student at Queen’s College, Oxford, and Gribben suggests that in bringing the nomination “he may have been doing his old college friend a special favor.”27 Westrowe was a “middle group” politician and a religious Independent who favored a “broadly irenic” tolerationist church settlement and had been part of a parliamentary committee tasked with considering the remonstrance of the “Dissenting Brethren.”28

The venue for the sermon was St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, where the Commons usually held its fast. It played host to more than two hundred fifty parliamentary sermons in the period of 1640–1653 and consequently witnessed some of the most important religiopolitical events of the day. This setting aside of the last Wednesday of every month for “public humiliation” began as England was edging closer to war in February 1642 and lasted until February 1649. Members of Parliament were obliged to attend and could face a ten-shilling fine if they were absent.29 As a preaching venue, St Margaret’s was preferred over Westminster Abbey because the remodeling that had taken place in the late fifteenth century provided a large, unified nave and chancel deemed more appropriate for godly preaching.30 In terms of Owen’s auditors, the makeup of the membership of the Long Parliament that heard these fast sermons was changing because of the presence of newly elected “recruiter” members of Parliament who were filling seats left vacant by deaths or by absent royalists.31

As members of the Commons gathered for the fast, the war that had broken out between King Charles I and his opponents was all but over after the parliamentary coalition enjoyed a string of successes in March and April. Parliament had duly appointed thanksgiving days, one earlier in the month and another for April 28 (further days of thanksgiving were also set aside for May).32 Now, however, an increasingly intense battle would rage at Westminster about the nature of the impending post–Civil War settlement as the parliamentary cause divided into two dominant and competing factions that sought to shape the peace: “political Presbyterians” and “political Independents.” These somewhat fluid groupings represented political and religious differences as well as differing attitudes regarding how the war should be concluded. Despite their names, they were often united more in what they opposed than on their positive visions for one particular form of church government. There are a number of important factors to consider in order to contextualize Owen’s sermon and the tracts that accompanied the published version of it: the failure to find an accommodation over different views on church government; the resulting debates about any toleration that might be granted; the English Parliament’s piecemeal establishment of a modified Presbyterian settlement; the ongoing petitioning campaigns, particularly by those in favor of a strict Presbyterian settlement; and the “tacit cooperation” that existed between Congregationalists and the parliamentary Erastians.

These various factors had led to polarizing opinions among the godly over matters of church government and liberty, so much so that this related network of issues could be described by one contemporary as “the great controversie of these times.”33 On the one hand, the Congregationalists at the Westminster Assembly (the so-called Dissenting Brethren) and the gathered churches advocated that all the godly (a term that could be defined in a broad or narrow way) ought to be either included in the national church or allowed the freedom to practice and worship alongside it. These Independents had managed to build quite significant support from the “political Independents” in the Commons, and they were backed by an increasingly powerful and confident army. Often associated with this grouping was a concern about authoritarian clergy wielding too much control, thereby leaving the church free from appropriate state influence. On the other hand, there were those who remained insistent on a thoroughgoing Presbyterian reformation, on the basis of the Solemn League and Covenant (the alliance between the English Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters sealed in 1643). Often associated with this was anxiety about religious heterodoxy and a conviction that deviant views and practices could be countered only by an effective and compulsory national Presbyterian church. This position was that of many of the London Presbyterian ministers, influential activists within the City of London government, the majority within the Westminster Assembly, the “political Presbyterians” in Parliament, and the Scottish Covenanter regime. Therefore, in this controversy, zeal for orthodoxy “jostled for position” with zeal for liberty of conscience for the godly: “Whilst many feared heresy, others feared a new persecution of the godly.”34

In this context in which the godly were divided, an Accommodation Order had been pushed through the Commons by the Independents in September 1644, directing a parliamentary committee

to take into Consideration the Differences in Opinion of the Members of the Assembly [of Divines] in point of Church-Government, and to endeavour an Union, if it be possible; and, in case that cannot be done, to endeavour the finding out some way, How far tender Consciences, who cannot in all Things submit to the common Rule which shall be established, may be borne with according to the Word, and as may stand with the publick Peace.35

The goal of this committee had been to find a means whereby the godly and orthodox could be comprehended within Parliament’s national Presbyterian church. The committee met for two sessions: the autumn of 1644 and the winter of 1645–1646.36 The idea that such a compromise would be written into the postwar church settlement horrified many of the high Presbyterians.37 The attempts to broker such an accommodation ended at an impasse in the month before Owen delivered this sermon. Owen is very likely referring to this when he speaks about the failure of accommodation between “dissenting parties about church government.”

A range of voices was now calling for some kind of toleration, and Owen himself was well aware that “much discourse about toleration has been of late days among men.” By now, gathered and separatist churches were meeting much more openly, and the sects were also growing in number and visibility. All of these groups sought some form of toleration, and the loose Independent coalition within Parliament was sympathetic to granting toleration. However, it should be recognized that there was a wide range of opinion over the nature of this toleration, and Owen pointed out that clarity in this matter was important because many “ambiguous words” had recently been spoken and written about the subject.38

The Congregationalists wanted to clear the ambiguity by insisting that they advocated only a limited toleration of orthodox Protestants and were committed to upholding the magistrate’s role in religion. For example, in 1645 Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) made it clear that he was not calling for a universal toleration: “If any man think I am pleading for liberty of all opinions,” he wrote, “I humbly desire them to remember that I only plead for the saints.”39Preaching before the Lords in November 1645, Jeremiah Burroughes (1599–1646) said that he joined the “great outcry against the toleration of all religions.”40 In the summer of 1646, he would answer the accusations made about the content of that sermon, asserting that he

did not preach for a universall, an unlimited toleration of all Religions, of all things, as both my selfe and others are very sinfully reported to doe . . . For my part, as I never was, so I am now not for a toleration of all things, nay I should be loth to live in England if ever it should be here.41

Nevertheless, Congregationalists like Goodwin and Burroughes were willing to tolerate a wider diversity among the godly than what was deemed acceptable by many Presbyterians.

At the other end of the toleration spectrum were radical voices who questioned the magistrate’s coercive power in matters of religion and who were calling for a much more far-reaching toleration that would extend to include the toleration of heresy and even false religions. Roger Williams (1603–1683), the tolerationist who had founded Rhode Island, published his manifesto for liberty of conscience in London in 1644. In The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, he called for a broad liberty that would be extended to not only all the godly but also Roman Catholics, Muslims, and even pagans.42 That same year, the future Leveller leader William Walwyn (d. 1681) argued that “the tyrannie over conscience that was exercised by the Bishops, is like to bee continued by the Presbyter: . . . [T]he oppressors are only changed.”43 The following year, Richard Overton (d. 1664) produced his Arraignment of Mr. Persecution (1645), which presented arguments for liberty of conscience and called for a similarly broad toleration. In his Sacred Decretal (1645), he warned that the clergy were becoming new Babylonian taskmasters threatening to enslave both Parliament and the people. In late January 1646, religious Nonconformity was defended in Walwyn’s Tolleration Justified, and Persecution Condemn’d and Overton’s Divine Observations upon the London-Ministers Letter against Toleration. Such appeals for a more radical form of liberty of conscience increased in the month before Owen preached this sermon: John Saltmarsh (d. 1647) produced his Groanes for Liberty (1646), and Overton was involved in the production of the anti-Presbyterian pamphlet The Last Warning to all the Inhabitants of London (1646), which declared that “no opinion is so dangerous, or heretical, as that of compulsion in things of Religion.”44On April 20, the Commons dealt with a “scandalous paper” that graphically identified Presbyterian uniformity with both Roman Catholicism and Laudian episcopacy by an illustration that showed pope, prelate, and presbyter standing together. Owen would have had some sympathies for the point being made: it seemed as if the persecuted were preparing to become persecutors.

Thus, in 1646 support for some kind of toleration was gaining pace as many feared a return to religious persecution. Those making such appeals often envisaged fundamentally different postwar ecclesiastical settlements. Congregationalists rejected unbridled religious liberty and supported a ministry maintained through tithes with Parliament exercising authority in matters of religion. Others hoped for something much more radical. For example, Overton’s Mar-Priest tract The Ordinance for Tythes Dismounted (1645) was a fierce polemic against an educated ministry supported by the collection of tithes.45Nonetheless, despite these differences among the tolerationists, there appeared to be a providential mandate for such an approach: in the now victorious New Model Army, Congregationalists had served alongside Baptists, Arminians, and other sectaries, and the army’s cause had prospered under such de facto toleration. Oliver Cromwell had been pressing this very point. After victory at the battle of Naseby in June 1645, he wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons about the God-given liberty of conscience enjoyed by his troops. Again, after the surrender of Bristol to the New Model Army, in September 1645, Cromwell once again appealed to the tolerance exercised in his own ranks as an example for the nation:

Presbyterians Independentes all had here the same spiritt of faith & prayer; the same pretence & answer, they agree here, know no names of difference; pitty it is, it should be otherwise, anywhere . . . as for being united in formes, Commonly called uniformity, every Christian will for peace take studdy and doe as far as Conscience will permitt, and from brethren in things of the minde, we looke for no Compulsion, but that of Light and reaason.46

Many within Parliament were concerned about such religious sentiments, so they omitted them from the published version of the report of the successful storming of Bristol.47 However, Cromwell’s postscript on liberty of conscience was circulated in an unauthorized version. Across London, people were “highly sensitised” to the implications of the triumph of the New Model Army.48The Presbyterian book collector, George Thomason (d. 1666), scribbled on his version that it had been “printed by the Independent partie and scattrd up and downe the streets Last night but expresly omitted by order of the howse.”49 For many religious or political Presbyterians, the idea of allowing for Nonconformity threatened to overturn an essential part of English Protestantism. Earlier in the decade, these Presbyterians had shown some willingness to allow a degree of toleration, but now many of them were coming to believe that there could be no true settlement if Congregationalism was allowed. This was particularly the case because of the delaying tactics and outright resistance of the Independents to a Presbyterian settlement. Such concerns were one of the factors that led to an antitoleration campaign in 1646.

This was ostensibly a crusade against tolerating the alarmingly heterodox ideas that had become widespread by the mid-1640s. What was viewed as alarming heresy had arisen for a variety of reasons: the removal of the structures of ecclesiastical discipline; the breakdown of press censorship that allowed controversial religious ideas to be promoted; the New Model Army had allowed radical ideas to ferment, and these had widespread reach through the preaching of soldiers and officers while on campaign; finally, an apocalyptic view of the mid-century crisis led some to believe that new spiritual truths would emerge after the destruction of the antichrist. In December 1645, the London Presbyterian ministers from Sion College wrote to the Assembly decrying “that great Diana of Independents, and all the Sectaries . . . viz. A Toleration.” For these Presbyterians, their concern was that the lack of proper discipline and uniformity was causing the disease of heresy and schism. They believed that various sects and promoters of heresy sought “safeguard and shelter . . . under the wings of Independency.”50The years in which Owen delivered his sermon and published the appended treaties witnessed a number of high-profile sermons preached against toleration: these included James Cranford’s Haereseo-machia: or, The Mischiefe Which Heresies Doe (1646), delivered before the Lord Mayor on February 1, and Matthew Newcomen’s The Duty of Such as Would Walke Worthy of the Gospel To Endeavour Union Not Division nor Toleration (1646), preached at St Paul’s on February 8. In January, Presbyterian mobilization in London led to the city submitting an antitoleration petition to both houses of Parliament, calling for a strict church settlement “according to our most Solemne Covenant” and demanding that “no Toleration be granted.”51 There were also provincial petitions. That February, in the county where Owen’s own rural parish lay, “Divers Ministers about Colchester in the County of Essex” had written to the Westminster Assembly desiring that “a blessed Reformation may be endeavoured against an intolerable Toleration.”52

Perhaps the voice that best represents this antitoleration crusade was Thomas Edwards (d. 1647). He played an infamous role in stoking fears about the dangers of Independency, Dissent, and the sects. At the beginning of the year he published the first installment of his “heresiographical blockbuster,” Gangraena (1646).53 He portrayed heresy as something that needed to be cut off and cauterized like a gangrenous limb before it proved fatal. The work presented a specter of religious anarchy by cataloging 176 errors, heresies, and blasphemies; 28 pernicious practices; and 16 types of sectaries. In Gangraena, error was “out of control . . . found all over the place, never subject to final definition or full description.”54 For Edwards, heresies had erupted because of the delay in establishing a church settlement, and he saw only two options: sectarian anarchy or Presbyterian polity. In doing so, Edwards was seeking to discredit mainstream Congregationalists by lumping them together with the radical sects and equating toleration with religious and political anarchy. For Edwards, their campaign for liberty of conscience for themselves would, inevitably, offer protection for heretical voices. Coffey describes how this polemical approach worked by creating the following dichotomy: “orthodoxy-Presbyterianism-coercion versus heresy-Independency-toleration.”55 Edwards’s aim was to build support for a thoroughgoing Presbyterian settlement by portraying gathered churches as a source of heresy and therefore as something that should not be tolerated. This approach had some plausibility because although the Congregationalists were not separatists, they had found a degree of common cause with some of the more radical groups in a broad Independent alliance since late 1644. This alliance of convenience was designed to counter the attempts to establish Presbyterian uniformity. Nevertheless, the Congregationalists intended to extend toleration only to include the orthodox godly. By the time of this April fast, Edwards’s work had already proved to be phenomenally popular. The initial part had already been reprinted twice, and the second part would be published in May before a final installment in December.56

This offensive against toleration coincided with one infamous case of heresy being brought before Parliament, that of the anti-Trinitarian Paul Best (1590–1657). Best had been influenced by radical religious ideas while serving as a solider on the continent during the Thirty Years War. In June 1645, he found himself imprisoned in the Gatehouse for promoting Socinian ideas.57The members of the Westminster Assembly had appeared en masse before the House of Commons to denounce Best’s “blasphemies” and to demand “condign Punishment upon an Offender of so High a Nature.”58 As the Westminster divines continued pressing for action to be taken against Best, intense debate in Parliament ensued over how his case ought to be handled, and in the spring of 1646 members of Parliament became divided over whether to impose the death penalty on Best.59 One of the challenges was that Parliament lacked the appropriate mechanisms to deal with such a case because the laws and judicial bodies that had been used in the past to deal with heretics were now obsolete. The case was deeply divisive because what was at stake was the wider issue of how orthodoxy was best defended. For some, Best’s activities demonstrated the urgent need for a church settlement in which the civil magistrate had coercive power to administer corporal punishments to heretics and blasphemers. For others, the fear was that Best’s case would be used to establish a legal precedent for the suppression of those who dissented from the Presbyterian settlement.

Despite the high-profile case of Best and the Presbyterian propaganda campaign, a significant number were unpersuaded that the problem of heresy was quite as widespread as many conjectured and that the antitoleration campaign was alarmist at best, if not outright untruthful at worst. For example, Joseph Caryl (1602–1673), preacher at Lincoln’s Inn and pastor of Magnus Church, preached before members of both houses of Parliament, the London city authorities, and members of the Westminster Assembly on April 20, 1646. The occasion was a thanksgiving to mark the ending of royalist resistance in the West. Caryl acknowledged that undoubtedly “no fore-head can deny” that “dangerous destructive and damnable” errors are among us, “perverting souls, and wasting the vitals of religion.”60 Nevertheless, Caryl claimed that there are fewer errors than people think, and, furthermore, “All is not errour which every one thinks to be errour.” He cautioned against taking the heresiographers like Edwards at their word, suggesting that “there may be an errour in taxing some with errours.”61 What errors and heresies there were ought, Caryl argued, to be countered with gospel weapons rather than carnal weapons. He contended that God

hath given a compleat Armour to his Church, wherewith to fight against all the errours and unsound doctrines of seducers. Therefore search the Magazines of the Gospel, bring out all the artillery, ammunition and weapons stored up there, look out all the chains and fetters, the whips and rods, which either the letter of the Gospel, or the everlasting equity of the Law hath provided to binde errour with, or for the back of heresie: let them all be imployed, and spare not. I hope we shall never use (I am perswaded we ought not) Antichrists broom to Sweep Christs house with, or his weapons to fight against errours with.62

On the same occasion, Hugh Peter (1598–1660), who had played a prominent role as a preacher to the parliamentary army, said that he did not need to tell his hearers that “every where the greater party is the Orthodoxall, and the lesser the Hereticks.”63 In this sermon and its tracts, Owen shared the perspective of both Caryl and Peter, particularly in regarding the heresiographers as somewhat alarmist and in emphasizing the need to counter heresy with spiritual weapons.

Against the backdrop of these calls for action against heresy and the ongoing debates about the limits and dangers of toleration, faltering steps were nonetheless being taken toward a moderate Presbyterian settlement for the English church. Parliament was attempting to achieve Presbyterian-Independent unity by a toleration of Congregationalists within the national church. An anticlerical majority in the Commons was intent on revising the Westminster Assembly’s proposals for a Presbyterian settlement based on the model of the Church of Scotland. Many in Parliament rejected the divine right theory of the clericalist Presbyterians, fearing that it would lead to the church exercising arbitrary power. For example, on June 13, 1645, Parliament rejected the Assembly’s claim that the church possessed the final authority in matters of church discipline. A majority in the Commons did not believe that this was the prerogative of the church. Consequently, as Parliament’s Presbyterian settlement developed in a rather haphazard and piecemeal fashion, it fell far short of the aspiration of most Presbyterians.64

The first ordinance, of August 19, 1645, provided for the election of parish elders and for the organization of churches “under the Government of Congregational, Classical, Provincial, and National Assemblies.”65 In this four-tier structure, congregations were grouped into classes comprising ten to twenty parishes. Classes were grouped into provinces, one for each English county and the City of London. The ordinance outlined the classical makeup in London but left the organization of the classes in the rest of the country in the hands of Parliament. Furthermore, the national assembly of the church was also under the ultimate authority of Parliament and would meet only when Parliament chose. Many of the zealous Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly and the city of London viewed the August ordinance as inadequate. Those who sought a Presbyterian settlement based on the Scottish model considered this “Presbyterian” system to be a merely nominal one because elders had the authority to exercise sacramental discipline over only a small number of specified “scandalous” offenses. A parliamentary judicial committee would be the final court of appeal that would adjudicate in all other cases that might be brought by any of the classes. Thus, the disciplinary power of a parish eldership was severely restricted.

Consequently, from the second half of 1645, the English Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly and the City of London along with their Scottish allies were involved in a petitioning campaign for a strict enforcement of Presbyterian uniformity.66 This is something that Owen explicitly refers to in his sermon. In a period of eight months, the assembly petitioned and wrote to Parliament sixteen times regarding the question of suspension from the Lord’s Table.67 Alongside this, the London Presbyterian ministers stepped up their campaign in favor of the recommendation of the Westminster Assembly by orchestrating a campaign of intense petitioning about matters pertaining to the independent authority of the church in any proposed settlement.68 This was designed to increase pressure for Parliament to establish a more rigorously Presbyterian church. For example, in August they petitioned Parliament, calling for the power to exclude from the Supper to be given to the church.69 In September, Parliament voted a petition on church government that was circulating in London scandalous and ordered that it be suppressed.70Undeterred, the London Presbyterian ministers then petitioned the City’s Common Council, protesting about how Parliament’s proposed ordinance for the election of elders failed to recognize the “Intrinsicall” power that church courts received directly from Christ. In November, the Council in turn petitioned Parliament about these matters and was rebuffed by the Commons, which was still seeking accommodation with the Independents.71 Then, in the new year, the fears of “a Toleration of such Doctrines as are against our Covenant, under the Notion of Liberty of Conscience” prompted the City of London government to petition both houses of Parliament on January 15–16, 1646, for the settling of the Presbyterian government.72

On March 14, revised legislation was passed, which, according to Parliament, laid “the foundation of a Presbyterial Government in every Congregation with Subordination to Classical, Provincial, and National Assembly, and of them all to the Parliament.”73 However, for high Presbyterians, what was now proposed remained insufficient to establish a properly reformed ecclesiastical settlement because, according to this ordinance, although ministers and elders were given a significant role in church discipline, it was Parliament that determined the grounds of excommunication and appointed commissioners to supervise matters of excommunication. The English Parliament was not prepared to give up its control of the reformation of the church by agreeing to the type of synodical autonomy the Presbyterians demanded.

The petitioning that Owen identified continued in the lead up to this fast sermon with both the London Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly petitioning Parliament against this proposed church settlement. In March, after intense debate, the City government petitioned Parliament against a revised program of lay commissioners in each of the ecclesiastical provinces, arguing that such power to regulate church discipline belonged to presbyteries.74 This was presented to the House of Lords but was voted a breach of parliamentary privilege, and this forced the London government to give up its demands for a fully fledged Presbyterian settlement.75 (The thanksgiving on April 2 at which Caryl and Peter preached was aimed at reconciling Parliament and the City after the controversial March petition.) Alongside the City’s petition, the Westminster Assembly protested that what was being proposed was “so contrary to that Way of Government which Christ hath appointed in His Church, in that it giveth a Power to judge of the Fitness of Persons to come to the Sacrament unto such as our Lord Christ hath not given that power.”76 The assembly’s petition was also rebuffed as a breach of privilege, and Parliament established a committee to appoint the commissioners. Robert Baillie (1602–1662), a Scottish Representative to the Assembly, castigated what was on offer as nothing more than “a lame Erastian Presbyterie” that lacked the power to effect true reformation.77 This form of Presbyterian settlement was dubbed “Erastian” because the judicial and disciplinary powers of the church were effectively subordinate to the authority of the English Parliament. As John Coffey explains, “a coalition of Erastians and Independents” in Parliament was now “calling the shots.”78 Owen was an ideal preacher for those in the Commons who shared these concerns because he was prepared to enter into such a working alliance in order to limit the influence of assertive Scottish-style Presbyterianism on the proposals for the settlement of the national church.79 By 1644, Baillie was persuaded that the Congregationalists and Erastians were working together, and he and the other Scottish Presbyterians in London played a key role in labeling them and anyone else who advocated the supremacy of the civil magistrate in spiritual matters as “Erastian.”80 This was not without reason: by the mid-1640s, the magisterial Congregationalists were arguing that the Congregational Way was the form of church government that best recognized the magistrate’s religious prerogatives over against centralized, hierarchical, clerical power.81The term is potentially misleading because English “Erastianism” predated the writings of Thomas Erastus (1524–1582). It had been the formal position on the relationship of church and state since the Henrician Reformation, which saw the spiritual and temporal realms united under one head. It was captured in Parliament declaring Queen Elizabeth to be the Supreme Governor of the Church and developed at length in the writings of Richard Hooker (1554–1600).82 During the Laudian era, the church sought to assert divine-right episcopacy in such a way as to undermine this concept. This was believed to have resulted in what many regarded as an ecclesiastical tyranny that threatened the very nature of England’s Reformation church settlement.83 An “Erastian” impulse for religious reform was fundamental to the Long Parliament’s political program and had been one of the factors that brought the country to civil war. Parliamentary Erastians were concerned that same jure divio claims made by the Laudian bishops were now being made by the high Presbyterians. It was thought that this was a threat to the supremacy of Parliament because it created an independent sphere of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Owen’s dedication to the members of the House of Commons in the printed version of his sermon reveals his deferential attitude to the civil magistrate, and in the sermon itself he urged members of Parliament to continue to exercise their authority in the reform of the English church. When he describes himself as pleading for “presbyterial government,” it is Parliament’s “lame Erastian Presbyterie” that he has in view. Owen is perhaps signaling his commitment to some of the priorities of the parliamentary Erastians by referencing the work of William Prynne (1600–1669).

On April 17, just over a week before the fast day on which Owen delivered this first parliamentary sermon, the Commons issued a wide-ranging declaration that promised a settlement in line with the Solemn League and Covenant but with two important qualifications: first, the church would not be allowed to exercise “arbitrary and unlimited Power and Jurisdiction”; second, there was an insistence on “due regard” for “tender consciences which differ not in fundamentals of religion.”84 (Tellingly, it did not specify how such a complex resolution might be achieved, and it is highly plausible to see the published version of this sermon as a proposed solution.) Several days later, the Commons told the Westminster Assembly, in no uncertain terms, that it was an advisory committee and that it should cease to submit petitions that asserted divine-right Presbyterianism and claimed full jurisdiction over matters of parish discipline and censure. Parliament would determine heresies and oversee the ordination of ministers and matters of excommunication.85 Those Presbyterians intent on securing an uncompromising Presbyterian settlement were deeply frustrated by this and refused to comply. Consequently, the day after Owen preached this fast sermon, a belligerent House of Commons censured the assembly for its clericalist ambitions, charging it with a breach of privilege and threatening it with praemunire.86 A delegation from the Commons presented Nine Queries to the Assembly, demanding evidence that the assembly’s proposed government was that set down in Scripture as having divine warrant “by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ.”87

At the same time, the counterrevolutionary City Remonstrance was being promoted in London.88 This is essential context for Owen’s sermon, and on the day that he preached it, Juxon recorded in his journal that “the City remonstrance . . . finds great cause of debate.”89 Presented to both houses of Parliament at the end of May, it argued for a rapid settlement with the king, on Presbyterian lines, in accord with the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant. It expressed outrage at “the daily invectives against us from the Pulpit, . . . the scurrilous and seditious Pamphlets daily broached against, and in the City: And the great contempt of . . . the Ministers of the Gospel, who adhere to the Presbyteriall Government.” It also demanded the suppression of London’s “separate congregations” and called for the exclusion of Separatists from public office.90 It regretted that because of Parliament’s declaration on April 17, many now expected some form of toleration. Owen’s published sermon should be understood as part of a broader campaign in opposition to the Presbyterian Remonstrance. Like those who were petitioning against the Remonstrance, Owen was prepared to work around Parliament’s Presbyterian settlement as laid out in the April declaration.91

It was into this complex and febrile context, one in which the parliamentary coalition was fracturing, that Owen delivered his sermon at St Margaret’s, Westminster. Owen’s participation marked a new phase of “more radical preachers” being invited to address the Parliament.92Nevertheless, as Tim Cooper notes, Owen addressed Parliament “as an insider” with references to the success of “our armies” and “our councils.”93 And while Trevor-Roper noted that these new preachers had to be “discreet,” Owen’s concerns were very clear, and they come into striking focus when set alongside the vision presented in the first sermon delivered on the day of the April humiliation. Nalton had called for the further reformation of the English church according to “that solemn sacred league”—that is, the Solemn League and Covenant that had been taken by members of Parliament in St Margaret’s Church on September 25, 1643. In particular, Nalton emphasized how a covenanted nation must deal with the “canker or gangrene” of error and idolatry.94 The Presbyterian minister cautioned members of Parliament: “Beware, lest out of cowardice or carnal fears, out of sinful compliance or conformity to the wills of men, you tolerate what God would not have tolerated.”95 For Nalton, it was imperative that Parliament act against heretical teaching: “Take some speedy course to stop this flood-gate lest we be drowned.”96 Those magistrates who failed to suppress error and heresies would be “charged with them.”97 Nalton would have been pleased that later that day the Commons voted to form a committee to draft a bill for “the Prevention of the Growth and spreading of Heresies and Blasphemies and for the Punishment of Divulgers and Assertors of them.”98 It was also ordered that a list be prepared of all members of Parliament who had not taken the Solemn League and Covenant, “and that those Members be injoined to take the Covenant the next Fast-Day.”99

After these sermons were preached, both preachers were thanked by Sir Peter Wentworth and the member of Parliament for Cricklade, the religious conservative Robert Jenner (ca. 1584–1651), and, as was customary, they were invited to publish their sermons.100 The majority of fast day sermons were printed, and this helped to disseminate the ideas to a wider audience where they were read and discussed. Owen’s sermon was published for Philemon Stephens, a London bookseller with a forty-year career who had already sold all three of Owen’s earlier works: A Display of Arminianism (1643), The Duty of Pastors and People Distinguished (1644), and Two Short Catechisms (1645). With his premises at Paul’s Cross Churchyard, he was “a mainstay in Dissenting publishing,” and his list of publications is illustrative of “business acumen informing godly fervor.”101 At this time, “virtually every frontage in the Cross Yard either was, or had been, a bookshop.”102 The different bookshops were known by their devices, in this case a gilded lion. Stephens remained at these premises “until at least 1665.”103 The printer “G.M.” was responsible for a number of high-profile sermons that were published in 1646, producing those by the likes of John Dury, Richard Vines, Joseph Caryl, Samuel Bolton, Francis Woodcock, and William Jenkyn. This is almost certainly a reference to George Miller’s printshop in Blackfriars.104

Owen’s preaching had not been universally well received, particularly his defense of a limited toleration and his call for parliamentary support for all “godly, orthodox, peace-loving pastors.” In response, when publishing his sermon, Owen took the opportunity to add two additional pieces: The first was A Short Defensative, in which he particularly explained his own reluctance to subscribe to recent petitions calling for the implementation of a strict Presbyterian settlement. This was followed by a Country Essay, at the request of a “worthy friend,” in which he laid out his vision for a form of church government that might find acceptance by all the godly. It was a proposal for how Parliament’s Presbyterian settlement might have due regard for “tender consciences.”

Summary and Analysis of the Sermon

In this sermon, Owen presents his own Macedonian call to the English Parliament to extend the work of gospel proclamation. Articulating a vision of England as a land recently visited by the Lord, he calls on Parliament to provide the necessary assistance to ensure that gospel preachers are sent out. In the dedicatory epistle, Owen makes very clear his understanding of the supremacy of the English Parliament and the central importance of religious reform to its work. He likens the task of the ongoing reformation of the English church at the end of the First Civil War to that of the workers in the days of