John, the eminent Puritan divine, was the son of Henry Owen, vicar of Stadham in Oxfordshire, where he was born some time in the year 1616. His biographers have traced his lineage backward to one of the five regal tribes in Wales; but we shall not here attempt to untwist the tangled knot of Welsh genealogies. He received his earlier education in the private academy of Edward Sylvester at Oxford, where the immortal Chillingworth had also been a pupil; and at the strangely precocious age of twelve entered as a student at Queen's College, having for his tutor Thomas Barlow, who was even then distinguished, and who subsequently rose to the see of Lincoln. He pursued his studies with an excess of application which would have destroyed most constitutions, and which left some seeds of future suffering even in his iron frame; for he allowed himself during many years only four hours for sleep, though the evils of this course were so far counteracted by his indulging in some of the most robust amusements of his college, and by the daily practice of music, in which he received lessons from Dr Thomas Wilson, the preceptor in the same delightful art of Charles I. Many years before the completion of his studies, Laud had been raised to the chancellorship of Oxford, and had begun to impose upon the students many of those rites and ceremonies which the Reformers had most severely condemned, the penalty of resistance to his demands being nothing less than expulsion from the university. All the worldly interests of Owen pointed to compliance with the innovations of this bigoted ecclesiastic; but convinced that very much of what Laud imposed was in itself wrong, and that what was in itself indifferent ought not to be complied with when sought to be bound upon the conscience as of Divine authority, and thus finding his way to the true standing-ground of the Puritans, he refused subjection to the innovations; and at the early age of twenty-one left Oxford, self-exiled for conscience sake. He found a home as chaplain and tutor, first in the family of Sir Robert Dormer, and subsequently in that of Lord Lovelace in Berkshire; but meanwhile the unconstitutional measures of Charles had driven the Parliament to arms, and placed the country in a state in which it was impossible for any honest man to remain neutral. It found the nobleman and his tutor on opposite sides; the former taking part with Charles and royal prerogative, the latter with the Parliament and popular rights. The loss of an honourable and lucrative post was not the only sacrifice which Owen had now to make at the call of duty; for about the same time he was disinherited, because of his opinions, of large estates, by a royalist uncle in Wales. Dispirited by these losses, he came to London, where sorrows of a deeper source, and having their origin in religious anxieties, greatly aggravated his sadness. Under the burden of these heavier griefs, he is described by his biographers as going on a certain Sabbath to hear the famous Presbyterian minister, Edmund Calamy, preach; when a rustic preacher, whose name he could never afterwards discover, to his great disappointment, entered the pulpit, and so met his difficulties in his discourse as to introduce him into a state of settled mental peace.

In 1642, Owen gave to the world his first literary production, The Display of Arminianism, which was intended to stem the current of theology that had become fashionable under the influence of Laud, and which, like all his other great compositions, holds its place, after the lapse of two centuries, as a standard work on the subject on which it treats. One incidental effect of its publication was to attract towards him the favourable notice of the committee for purging the church of scandalous ministers, who, in consequence, invited him to accept the pastorate of Fordham, a village overhanging the pleasant valley of the Stour between Suffolk and Essex. Not long after, he was transferred to the pastoral care of Coggeshall, an important market-town in Essex, where he soon found himself surrounded by a Owen congregation of 2000 people, numbers of whom were attracted by his weighty words from the neighbouring parishes; and while in this place he adopted views on the subject of church government which approximated to, though they never became identical with, the modern Congregational platform. From the same place emanated one of his greatest works, on which he owns himself to have expended much of the thought and toil of seven years, *The Death of Death in the Death of Christ*. During Owen's incumbency in this town, the neighbouring town of Colchester was besieged by the parliamentary army under General Fairfax; and Coggeshall having been the head-quarters of the general during the ten weeks of the siege, a friendship was formed between him and Owen which proved one of the links in the chain that drew him forth soon after into public life. His solid and enlarging reputation had already led to his preaching before Parliament; but at length he was unexpectedly summoned to preach on the day after the execution of Charles; and the manner in which he performed this task has been regarded by many as presenting one of the most vulnerable points in his public life. It is remarkable that throughout the entire sermon no reference is made to the awful tragedy of which he must have been aware that every mind was full; and this has been denounced as selfish and cowardly temporizing, and a forgetting of the fearless fidelity that became his position. But what evidence is there that he condemned the act of which it is well known that Milton and many others approved? And if he even hesitated in his judgment regarding it, then the silence which he adopted was his wisest and most honest expedient.

The *Discourse on Toleration*, which he appended to this sermon when published, and which he dedicated to Parliament, occupied the same ground as the treatise of Locke on the same subject,—viz., that "errors in religion are not punishable by the civil magistrate, with the exception of such as in their own nature disturb the order of society"—did much to confirm the opinions of the religious party of which he was the head, as well as to shape the sentiments of the political leaders and patriots of the age. Cromwell had not yet chanced to meet with the pastor of Coggeshall; but on an early occasion, when he was once more appointed to preach before Parliament, the Lord-General and the chiefs of the army were present; and on the following day, happening to meet in the garden of Fairfax, proposals were made by Cromwell to Owen to accompany him on his contemplated expedition to Ireland, both as chaplain and in order to investigate and amend the affairs of the University of Dublin. It was with little grace that Owen yielded to the wishes of Cromwell, whose proposals were gradually assuming more of the shape and tone of commands; and with less grace still did his flock consent even to a temporary separation. But the issue deserved the sacrifice. For the effect of Owen's visit was to awaken a deeper interest in the religious condition of Ireland, to reform the rampant abuses of the university of Dublin, and to obtain for Trinity College valuable immunities, which it still enjoys. He had scarcely been welcomed back from Ireland to Coggeshall, when a command of Parliament ordered him, along with Joseph Caryl, to accompany Cromwell, in the cause of the Commonwealth, to Scotland, and cast him a second time amid the uncongenial din of sieges and of battlefields. It has been surmised that Cromwell desired his help in his anticipated discussions with the Scottish ministers; and some have even affirmed that his hand can be distinctly traced in the letters which Cromwell addressed to the ministers who had taken refuge in the castle of Edinburgh, which certainly abound in "lumbering sentences with noble meanings." Owen was allowed to return to Coggeshall many months before Cromwell received his "crowning mercy" at Worcester, but it was only to find himself soon after severed from its seclusion and quiet activities for ever; for on the 18th of March 1651, "the House, taking into consideration the worth and usefulness of John Owen, M.A., of Queen's College, ordered that he be settled in the deanery of Christ Church, in the room of Dr. Reynolds;" and on the 9th of September of the following year, letters from Cromwell nominated him vice-chancellor of the university; and thus he entered the gates of Oxford to become the head of that great and ancient seat of learning, from which, ten years before, he had consented to be exiled for conscience sake.

The elevation of Owen to the vice-chancellorship gave him the virtual command of the university; and a mind of no common energy and wisdom was needed to restore it from the ruined state into which the civil wars had plunged it. Casting itself with something more even than common chivalry into the cause of the royalists, it had not only drained its treasury and melted its plate, but incurred an overwhelming debt; halls and colleges, empty of students, had been transformed into barracks and powder-magazines; while many of the students who had become soldiers, returning again to their books, brought back with them the insubordination and the profligacy which they had learned in the camp and the field. We do not wonder that the hand of Owen trembled as he seized the helm of Oxford at such a period. But his administration was firm, liberal, and conciliatory. While profligate students were treated with a rigour which led him in some instances even to interfere with his own hand, and cast them into "Bocardo," the studious were encouraged, and poor students of merit admitted to free commons. While the law furnished him with ample power for disturbing the worship of Episcopalians, it was allowed to proceed in peace over against his own door; the jealousy of the Presbyterians was disarmed by his placing some of their most eminent and qualified men in offices of high honour and emolument; the religious condition of the students was sought to be improved by the regular ministrations of himself and Dr Goodwin in St Mary's church; and so great was the change wrought in a few years in the general condition of Oxford as to evoke at length the reluctant praise of Clarendon.

But even the government of a university, and the raising of its affairs from the brink of ruin, were not sufficient to exhaust the resources of Owen's mind at this period. Several of his greatest theological treatises, such as his *Diatribia de Divina Justitia*; his work on the *Perseverance of the Saints*, which extends over more than five hundred folio pages; his *Vindiciae Evangelicae*, of almost equal colossal bulk; and his practical treatise on the *Mortification of Sin in Believers*—which might have been sufficient of themselves to absorb and to recompense the energies of a lifetime,—bear date during the period of his vice-chancellorship. And during the same engrossing period he was consulted and employed by Cromwell on almost every measure which contained in it an ecclesiastical element, and had for its avowed object the promotion of religion in England. We find him, under the immediate auspices of the Protector, engaged with divines of other sects in devising measures of ecclesiastical union and comprehension; holding a prominent place in the famous "Committee of Triers," for ejecting ministers and schoolmasters of heretical doctrines or scandalous lives, and giving liberal advice, in the face of some fanatical and violent opponents, on the admission of Jews to settle and trade in England. On one part of his conduct alone at this period has he been severely blamed by his enemies, while even his friends have in general only ventured on a timid and hesitating defence. We refer to his allowing himself to be returned as representative for the university of Oxford to the Parliament which was summoned by Cromwell to meet in 1654, and to his taking his seat in the face of the representations that he was disqualified as a clergyman. His zeal for the endangered interests of his university was no doubt the motive which prompted him to assert this doubtful position; but when he found the validity of his election so vehemently and plausibly questioned, he would have consulted his dignity more had he declined to sit. His patriotism shone out with true lustre not long after, when, on the proposal of a majority of Parliament to bestow upon Cromwell the crown and title of King, he joined with Fleetwood and the majority of the army in opposing the movement, and even drew up the petition which is known to have defeated the measure, and to have constrained Cromwell to decline the perilous honour. This bold step, which made the Commonwealth his debtor, so far estranged from him the affection of Cromwell, and cost him his vice-chancellorship. He resigned the presidency of Oxford, and yielded up the academic fuscus into the hands of Dr Comant, his Presbyterian successor, with dignity. Referring to the number of persons that had been matriculated and graduated during his administration, to the professors' salaries that had been recovered, to his successful defence of the rights and privileges of the university, to the visible reformation of manners among its students, and to the fact that he left its treasury increased tenfold, "I seek again," said he, "my old labours, my usual watchings, my interrupted studies."

The next public movement of importance in which we discover the presence of Dr Owen, who had been diplomated some time before his administration at Oxford ceased, is in the conferences of the Savoy Assembly or Synod, in which a "Confession" expressive of the faith of the Independents was framed, after the manner of that which had already been drawn up by the divines at Westminster, and in which he took the leading part. Except in its sections on church order, it very closely resembled, not only in sentiment, but in phraseology, the earlier compend, and served at the time of its compilation both to unite the party of the Independents in closer confidence among themselves, and to distinguish them from violent and fanatical sectaries who sought to obtain sanction for their extravagances under a respected name. But before the Savoy conferences were ended, the great spirit of Cromwell had left the world; and his death had taken from the Puritans the best security for their precarious liberty. It is the work of general history to describe the resignation and retirement of Richard Cromwell, the mysterious secrecy and duplicity of Monk, and the return of Charles to the throne of his ancestors, without any pledge being obtained for the rights of conscience and for liberty of worship beyond the promise that "he would have respect to tender consciences"—a pledge which was intended to be kept only so long as it was unsafe to violate it. The act which restored the king restored the laws, both civil and ecclesiastical, to the state in which they had been at the commencement of the war; re-established the hierarchy; and constituted all classes of Nonconformists a proscribed class. The years which followed accordingly exhibit the gradual diminution of the liberties of the Puritans, and their subjection to a succession of acts which left them the alternatives of silence, or conformity, or suffering. Owen, by this time severed also from the deanery of Christ Church, became the pastor of a little flock in his native village of Stadham, hoping in that obscurity to escape notice without being forced to silence. Informers, however, armed with powers supplied by the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts, as well as by the Act of Uniformity, and prompted by bribes, drove him even from this narrow sphere, rendering it only safe for him to whisper truth in upper chambers, or in midnight assemblies. The breathing times from persecutions which were afforded by the plague and by the great fire in London were eagerly improved by Owen and the other Puritan preachers, who reared vast wooden structures, called tabernacles, in which their long silent voices were once more heard by wondering and awestruck thousands. The Act of Indulgence by Charles, however questionable in its motives or in its principles, only gave back to the Nonconformists what was their right; and, taking shelter under its precarious protection, Owen ventured to form a church in Leadenhall Street, where there gathered around him many of the heroes of the wars of the Commonwealth, "honourable women not a few," and pious noblemen, such as Lord Wharton, who, while they did not join his church, delighted to wait on his ministry. His confidential intercourse with these noblemen enabled him at times to learn the dangers that threatened Nonconformity, to apprise his suffering brethren in rural districts of coming evils, and it is even understood afforded him the gratification of helping to release Bunyan from his prison at Bedford. While the liberty of preaching was thus restrained and fitful, Owen did noble service at this period with his pen, and made some of his greatest bequests to posterity. Only once in his many controversial combats did he retire unquestionably vanquished from the field. Having rashly called in question the statements of Walton in his Polyglott, in reference to the various readings in the original manuscripts and versions of the Scriptures, and having with equal rashness ascribed consequences to those statements which they did not bear, he drew down the exposure of the proud ecclesiastic, who proved by the tone of his answer that he was not displeased to find an opportunity of laying the leader and champion of the Puritans in the dust. But he was more than compensated for his mortification in this instance by his triumph over Parker in his argument against toleration, and in his base attempts to blacken the character of many of the Nonconformists—a work in which Owen was at length joined by Andrew Marvel, in his Rehearsal Transposed, which turned the laugh even of Charles and his court against the truculent defamer, and held him up to immortal infamy. It would occupy undue space simply to enumerate all the works of Owen which belong to this closing period of his life, and which were often born amid the depression and the darkness of persecution. Amongst his devotional and practical writings, those on Communion with God, on Temptation, on Indwelling Sin, and on Spiritual Mindedness, belong to this period; among his controversial works, his discussions on Schism, and his Animadversions on Fiat Lux; among his theological treatises, his Theologoumena, his work on the Holy Spirit, and his Christologia; and among his expository compositions, that on the 130th Psalm, and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews,—the gigantic work of a gigantic mind, which, for exhaustive fulness, exegetical tact, matured learning, and profound piety which doubles his power as an interpreter, stands unapproached, except by the colossal work of the Dutch Vitringa on Isaiah. His latest writings make it evident that his desires were intensely turned, towards the close of his life, to two great objects—union among Protestants, and the resistance of Popery; while his course as an author was sublimely closed by his Meditations on the Glory of Christ, to the first sheets of which he gave his finishing touch on the day of his death. That death came while he yet stood only on the confines of old age. The calm and the kind hospitalities of Lord Wharton's house at Woburn, and the sweet seclusion of Ealing, could do little to alleviate the asthma and the torturing stone which were shaking his iron frame to pieces. On the 24th of August 1683, the anniversary of St Bartholomew's Day, the spirit of the great Puritan passed upward from amid the strife of tongues. Eleven days afterwards, a long and mournful procession, composed of more than sixty noblemen in carriages drawn by six horses each, and of many others, in mourning-coaches and on horseback, silently followed the mortal remains of Owen along the streets of London, and deposited them in Bunhill Fields, the Puritan necropolis.

The popular conceptions that have generally been formed Owen have considerably differed in more than one respect from the facts. He was not, as many appear to have imagined from the magnitude and abstruse nature of some of his works, a mere recluse who delighted to pore over dim manuscripts and dusty tomes, but a man of large popular sympathies, capable of social delights, and with such commanding appearance and propriety of manners as made him fit to stand before kings. And those are equally mistaken who conceive of him as a sermon-maker, rather than a preacher who is able to inspire and illuminate his words by the looks and the living voice. He is described even by adverse contemporaries, such as Anthony Wood, as "able to wind himself almost as he pleased into the affections of his auditory;" and we may rest assured that the helmed heroes of the Commonwealth would not have so often invited to address them, on their days of highest festival, a mummy or an automaton. More than any other of the contemporary leaders of the Puritans, Owen was a man of affairs, and possessed in remarkable combination that clear apprehension and firm grasp of great principles, that quick perception of character and discovery of hidden motives in other men, that knowledge of the times,—when to act, and when to economize strength,—which go to form the social leader, and even the great statesman. Baxter, with his impulsive energy, would have led his friends into difficulties; or, with his love of dialectics and fine distinctions, would have reasoned and speculated when he should have acted; Howe was more formed for meditation than for the rough details of common life; Owen was the pilot to whom the Puritans looked whenever they saw the gathering storm.

As a theological thinker and author he holds his own distinctly-defined place among those Titanic intellects with which his age abounded. Surpassed by Baxter in point and pathos, by Howe in imagination and in the higher philosophy,—without the tenderness of Flavel, or the native elegance of Bates,—he is unrivalled in his power of unfolding the rich meanings of Scripture, of bringing out the exhaustless treasures from the mine of a text, of disclosing the harmonies and connections of passages of Scripture; of doing the work of a biblical interpreter, one among a thousand. There is scarcely a great subject in the wide range of inspired theology on which he has not written a treatise that has now lived for two centuries; and his works are to this hour the armory to which modern controversialists go the most readily to equip themselves in the well-tried panoply of the strong and sturdy Puritan. He was accustomed to read everything beforehand on the subject on which he intended to write, especially the writings of opponents; and when he sat down himself to write, he exhausted his theme, leaving to an author that should attempt to follow him not even the gleanings at the corners of the field.

His style has most hindered his popularity. Many fine passages might no doubt be extracted from his writings; but in general his manner of expressing himself is lumbering, involved, and unmusical, and the golden thoughts but seldom owe anything to skilful setting. We have elsewhere compared his motions to those of the elephant—slow and ungainly, but with a tread that shakes the earth, and with a irresistible force that breaks its way through tangled thickets and serried ranks of armed men. In his writings he was pre-eminently the great theologian, and in his practical counsels the Nestor, of the Puritans.

Owen, John (called in Latin, Oceanus or Audoeus), a writer of Latin epigrams, once very popular all over Europe, was of Welsh extraction, and was born at Armon in Caernarvonshire. He was educated under Dr Bilson at Wykeham's School, Winchester, and afterwards studied at New College, Oxford, where he received a fellowship in 1584, and took the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1590. (Wood, Ath. Ox., vol. i., col. 471.) Throwing up his fellowship during the following year, he turned schoolmaster, and taught successively at Trylegb, near Monmouth, and at Warwick. He soon became distinguished for his perfect mastery of the Latin language, and for the humour, felicity, and point of his epigrams. As a writer of Latin verse he took rank with Buchanan and Cowley. Those who, with Dryden, place the epigram "at the bottom of all poetry," will not estimate Owen's poetical genius very high; yet the continental scholars and wits of the day used to call him "the British Martial." "In one respect he was a true poet," says a biographer; "namely, he was always poor." He was a staunch Protestant besides, and could not resist the temptation of turning his wit against Popery occasionally. This practice caused his book to be placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Romish Church in 1654, and what was yet more serious, led a rich old uncle of the Catholic persuasion, from whom he had "great expectations," to cut the epigrammatist out of his will. When the poet died in 1622, his countryman and relative, Bishop Williams of Lincoln, had him buried at St Paul's Cathedral, London, where he erected a monument to his memory bearing an elegant epitaph in Latin. (See Dugdale's Hist. of St Paul's.) Owen's Epigrammata are divided into twelve books, of which the first four were published in 1606, and the rest at four different times. The best editions are those printed by Elzevir and by Didot. Translations into English, either in whole or in part, have been made by Vicars, 1619; by Pecke, in his Parnassi Perpetuum, 1659; and by Harvey in 1677, which is the most complete. La Torre, the Spanish epigrammatist, owed much to Owen, and translated his works into Spanish in 1674. French translations of the best of Owen's epigrams have been published by A. L. Lebrun, 1709, and by Kérivalant, 1819.

Owen, William, one of the ablest of English portrait-painters, was the son of a bookseller, and was born at Ludlow in Shropshire in 1769. After receiving a good education in his native town, he repaired to London at the age of seventeen, and began to study under Catton, the academician. He sent his first portrait to the Somerset House exhibition in 1792, at the time when Lawrence, Beechey, and Hoppner were in their palmiest days. The easy and elegant touch, and the clear and strong perception of character which the young artist displayed, soon exacted attention. William Pitt sat to him in 1798; and from that time the merits of Owen in portraiture began to be generally recognised. The portraits of the Duchess of Buccleuch, Sir William Scott, Cyril Jackson, the Bishop of Durham, and the Marquis of Stafford, came to be admired for their freedom, vigour, and excellent light and shade. Owen was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1806. The Prince of Wales made him his portrait-painter in 1810, and would have knighted him in 1813 had not the artist declined the honour. Meanwhile Owen had been rising to an equally high place in another province of his profession. His fancy sketches, especially that of "Peasants Resting by the Roadside," and that of "The Fortune-teller and the Lady," were remarkable for their exquisite delineation of ordinary life, and attracted crowds of admirers. Towards the close of his life, however, Owen found no time to indulge in these sportive exercises of the pencil, and was obliged to confine himself to portraiture. In 1818 his prosperity was at its height. The portraits he had painted amounted to nearly two hundred, and his income had risen to about £3000 a year, when an attack of disease shook the brush from his hand. He continued to linger on in great debility, till a dose of opium, which he had swallowed by mistake, put an end to his existence on the 11th February 1825. (Cunningham's Lives of Painters, &c.)