(Biographies) John Owen — John Piper

John Owen: Providence, Holiness, and the Life of a Puritan Pastor

The following message is by pastor John Piper. More information from desiring. God is available at www .desiringgod .org.

If you ask the question Where you might get started in John Owen, there would be just a little bit of bibliography for you to take home. Let me tell you a story from this morning that makes me Feel very loved by the Lord and that he's behind this message.

God's Providence in Unexpected Interruptions

Dr. Fuller and I were exchanging miracle stories. I Finished writing my talk at one o 'clock this morning and went to bed and Felt good. I needed another two three hours to Get it ready to deliver. For five years in this conference, I delivered the message on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning, that's tomorrow. That's when I thought I was to talk in this conference when I went to bed last night. Which means that had something not intervened. About lunchtime somebody would have come up to me and said I'm really looking forward to your talk today and that I would have just froze Today.

It would have been awful. I would have just been totally unprepared. Well, dr. Fuller called me at 445 this morning Because his computer wouldn't work. Now. That was a dark cloud of Providence when you go to bed at one o 'clock.

Why am I being called? This is bad. This is a bad event and I got the computer running over the phone. It's my computer and I went back to bed and as I was lying there the thought entered my mind. Karsten asked if he could have lunch with me this afternoon and I said No I'm busy.

Why did I say no? I'm busy. That's my oldest son for 55. I've Got three hours Lord. Thank you. Thank you, and I went to my study and I got ready. Now the lesson in this is Behind a frowning Providence.

He hides a smiling face. So many things in my life happened like that. How many times must God do that so that I don't second-guess him with telephone calls in the middle of the night? How many times must he do this to me so I won't murmur.

Philippians says don't murmur. Don't grumble. When life takes a bad bad turn. Felix Cooper the best of all possible worlds. Now I recognize that about ten minutes after the bad thing happened it became a glorious gift.

Ten minutes sometimes you have to wait ten years and Sometimes till you get to heaven, but if you believe that God's good. No phone call in the middle of the night Should be murmured at. I really I really feel loved by the Lord this morning.

I believe that was a gift of God that dr. Fuller couldn't make his computer work and Then he chose me to call and not one of the secretaries. Why do you do that because God loves me? He didn't want me to be embarrassed With an unprepared talk and didn't want you to have no message.

Or just read a boring 35 page Unweeded out manuscript, okay enough to give me encouragement. Whether whether it helps you. I hope it does. I Want to pray one more time now Lord I believe with all my heart that you have ordained for us to have heroes.

To imitate their faith consider the outcome of their lives. And there is one possible one. We're about to talk about it. I Pray that his life will not have been lived in vain even this morning and That my labors to read him and think about him would not be in vain.

But that it would build faith. That we would be made a holy company of shepherds here. Because of the model the inspiration of this great man John Owen. So come Lord and free my tongue with these two or three Gift hours of preparation early this morning enable me to make plain the truth.

In Jesus name I thank you and pray. Till this year there been six speakers keynote speakers at the Bethlehem conference and Three of them that's half of them have said John Owen is the most important theologian in their lives.

Now that's a remarkable thing. For a man who's been dead three hundred and eleven years and whose style of writing was so bad That he himself Doubted that people would read it. For example in the death of death In the death of Christ perhaps his most famous work on limited atonement.

John Owen's Theological Importance and Difficult Writing

He wrote in the preface something that today no marketing agent would allow him to write reader if thou art as many in this pretending age a sign or title gazer and Cummest into books as Cato into the theater to go out again thou hast had thine entertainment.

Farewell. Well J. I. Packer Sinclair Ferguson and Roger Nicole did not say farewell. They lingered and They bear witness today in their writings in their life that this man is worth Reading. Packer says that it's worth every effort to get through this kind of weighty convoluted unnecessarily prolix Diction that's his kind of word.

He says J. I. Packer The Puritans this book right here is worth all the money you could spend for it. This is his tribute to the Puritans. He says that in this book that the Puritans are the Redwoods in the forest of theology.

I see some of you've read it and John Owen is the greatest of the Redwoods. Now you translate that into? Superiority and it means he's the greatest. That there is in Packer's mind. Roger Nicole doesn't write much.

I don't know of any book Roger Nicole's written. There probably is one. He's contributed essays all over the place. But when he was here and I've heard it on tape as well. He said the greatest theologian in the English language.

I guess that's to set him off from Calvin and Luther the greatest theologian and Augustine in the English language is John Owen and then with a little smile Looking toward me even Jonathan Edwards. I don't have Owen hanging on the wall in my study yet.

But I do have Edwards and Dan Fuller who by the way looked at it the other day and asked my secretary who it was Reinhold Niebuhr. No, that's you. Wouldn't occur to dr. Fuller to look into a mirror. This is a great.

That's why I love him so much. We're looking elsewhere. Well Sinclair Ferguson, where's that book? Now these we have a bunch of this is worth buying expensive for a little book. But all of them are today Sinclair Ferguson.

John Owen on the Christian life. This is Ferguson's reading. I think he's read all the 23 volumes or at least 16. I don't know if he's read the Hebrews commentary and he's distilled it into a book. So if you want to get an introduction to Owen that's faithful to Owen by a contemporary Owen.

Then read Sinclair Ferguson. He said my personal interest in Owen as a teacher and theologian began in my late teenage years. You know, he's not normal person. I mean, I have a couple of teenagers and that's just Incredible unthinkable impossible, but he said it I believe it when I first read some of his writings.

Like others before and since I found that they dealt with issues which contemporary evangelical literature rarely if ever touched. I Think that's true. Just last night. It was one o 'clock, but I Brain was just zinging like this.

So I had to read myself to sleep. So I opened communion with God by John Owen. I thought that's a good way to get ready. Now how many of you have ever read anything written in the last hundred years on how to distinctly have fellowship with and commune with each Independent person of the Trinity and not the whole of the Godhead at one time.

How do you distinctly discern the actions of the Spirit so that there is a distinct praise and a distinct love and a distinct? Trust and a sweetness of communion with that distinct person. I felt like I was almost meeting the Holy Spirit at one o 'clock this morning where.

Well that so my experience at 40 I'm 8 now 48 now, but I first read Owen 12 years ago as a pastor trying to solve the L in tulip From volume 10. This is the best book that's ever been written on the L in tulip.

Everybody admits that this is the most significant work That's ever been written on the L in tulip if you're struggling with being a four-pointer instead of a five or a seven Pointer you you should you should buy volume 10 and read it.

It'll take a long time and you can't read it fast and it'll be hard, but it's worth it and was persuasive. For me now the reason I linger over these tributes here Things like the Calvin of England one person writes and another the Atlas and patriarch of independency Charles Bridges, I love Charles Bridges book on the Christian ministry.

I recommend it highly he says upon the whole for luminous exposition powerful defense of scriptural doctrine determined enforcement of practical obligation Skillful anatomy of the self deceitfulness of the heart and for a detailed and wise treatment of the diversified exercises of the Christians heart he stands probably Unrivaled.

The reason I linger over these tributes is because like I said in my prayer. I believe in heroes because the Bible Says to have heroes namely Hebrews 13 17 remember those who led you who spoke the Word of God to you and Considering the result of their conduct Imitate their faith.

Remember them. Consider them Imitate them. That's a hero. The Bible says you should have heroes and As I look around the scene today for living heroes for myself There are so few. And The ones that I have are the ones who have heroes.

Packer Ferguson Nicole. The people that seem to be heroic and worthy of emulating today are people who have heroes. Most of them are dead in their lives, but they have them. So I linger over them just to get you started get you going to say maybe this man is worth Imitating or considering.

The Scarcity of Personal Information About John Owen

Let me turn now to an overview of his life. Most people don't know anything about John Owen. There are a couple of reasons for that one is That he's so hard to read that hardly anybody reads him. There's been a little Renaissance with banner of truth trust.

Producing the volumes is the way they looked when I bought them. I don't know if there's the same color now or not. But there's 16 these white volumes and then there's seven more which are orange in my cabinet, which are Hebrews.

So 23 volumes of the collected works and that's all there is as far as I know. Except this little this little thing which was published in 1970. The correspondence of John Owen there aren't many of his letters in here.

Most of these are letters to him rather than from him. All of his diaries were destroyed. We have almost nothing on the personal life of John Owen which when I discovered made me panic that I Planned to lecture on him because I thought this is gonna be very boring because it's the personal touch that makes these lectures Worth listening to I think but I found enough.

I hope to Interest me and I hope it will interest you. No diaries a few letters the collected works and that's it. And it's very very frustrating when you find out certain things about him that you would desperately like to know more about.

One of his biographers says so Owen must remain hidden as it were behind a veil his secret thoughts remain his own. And I wrote. Maybe not because when you read mortification of sin and the glories of Christ and on communion with God and you Discern a heart in tune with and exalting into God you you don't need a diary anymore.

You've got the man right there in front of you. He was born in England and 1616 same year William Shakespeare died and four years before the pilgrims set sail. That was smack in the middle of the Puritan century.

Where does it stop and start? I've heard a lecture from Packer that says the easiest way to remember it is 1560 to 1660. That's the easiest way just roughly 1560 to 1660 the great Puritan century where all these pastors were preaching these profoundly heart-searching messages and unpacking the scriptures with exaltation.

Packer says this about the Puritan movement. The goal of the Puritan movement was to complete what England's Reformation began to finish. Reshaping Anglican worship to introduce effective church discipline into the Anglican parishes to establish righteousness in the political Domestic and socio-economic fields and to convert all Englishmen to vigorous evangelical Faith.

He was plopped right in the middle of that by the providence of God and it ended virtually at the same time. He did. He said 1660 because that was the year 1662 is the act of uniformity which tossed 2 ,000 Puritan ministers out of their parishes.

And then you had that long period of persecution up until the act of toleration 1689. Owen died in 1683. So 1616 to 1683 the middle and a little beyond the end of the classic Puritan Era. His father was a pastor.

He had a mother. He had four Siblings we know zero about them. He never mentioned them and he never mentioned his mother in all of his writings. He mentioned his father one time and he said I was bred up From my infancy under the care of my father.

Who was a non-conformist all his days and a painful laborer in the vineyard of the Lord? So there's one connection because Owen if anything was a painful laborer in the vineyard of the Lord ten years old.

He goes to grammar school in Oxford to get ready to go to the University at 12. He enters Queen's College. You say whoa Wow 12 University. Everybody was doing that in those days. It wasn't that unusual to go to Queen's College at age 12 got his bachelor's at 16 his master's at 19 entered the Bachelor of Divinity which was the theological degree then.

I'm glad I've still got one. I didn't cash it in didn't pay my $20 to get an MDF. I still got the BD, which is the great historic Degree and he dropped out boom because he couldn't stand the high church William Laud.

Kind of Anglicanism that so dominated Oxford in those days. He never got his degree. He was awarded a DD honorary degree later on but never did do any serious academic degree work after his MA 1642. The Civil War broke out Oliver Cromwell in the House of Commons against the House of Lords which disappeared for 20 years in that period called the interregnum and Charles first was executed and there was no King until his son Prince Charles the second returns in 1660 and that's the golden era of Protestant era those Protestantism those I mean Puritanism those 20 years and he lived right through those Years.

John Owen's Conversion and Early Ministry

He went to London in 1643 or two three I believe and Five events happen in those first Early years now. What is how old is he now? 1616 to 1642 is 26 years old. Okay, the first and most important event in those early years in London.

Where he was Had a little parish. Was his conversion at least some buyer for say it was conversion. Another one would say it was a awakening An assurance thing and you can't really tell but what's so remarkable about it.

Is that it's almost identical to Spurgeon's, you know, the Spurgeon story is 16 years old. He's on his way to a well-known Chapel snow is so bad he can't go he stops a little Methodist Chapel a No name the pastor isn't even there a no-name layman stands up takes Isaiah 45 22 look To me all the ends of the earth and be saved.

He says it over and over again 20 times Spurgeon says. So he's so stupid. He doesn't have anything to say but the scriptures and God. That's what Spurgeon calls him stupid and then God saves Charles Spurgeon and he never even finds out Who the man is?

That's exactly the way it happened with John Owen. He's on his way to Hear Edmund Callamy at st. Mary's Church Aldermanbury With his cousin because this is a great preacher in those days. Evidently. I never heard of him and He's not there.

Callamy didn't show up and his cousin said let's go down the street to forget what other big-name church and Owen for some reason says let's not let's just stay and A simple preacher took the text Matthew 8 26.

Why are you fearful? Oh you of little faith and it was God's appointed word and A point in time and there was like Wesley says a strange warming and All of his doubts banished all of his fears disappeared.

He had the assurance that he was born of God and that stamped the rest of his life. Now, let me just put in a parenthesis here. I've often wondered when I talk on these big shots Whether it can cast a pall of Discouragement as well as encouragement because we all know that we're not a John Owen.

Absolutely. No way is anybody in this room? Nobody absolutely no exceptions Dan Fuller or anybody is going to be a John Owen and produce This quantity of work and have it last 300 and some years. So here we hold him up and you all go out, you know like this.

Now here's the lesson you can hear it coming Charles Spurgeon and John Owen came into being By two people that history never even named. Okay, so we're not going to be John Owens. But I'll tell you every Sunday I stand in this pulpit.

I believe I might create one or something a little less or a thousand a little less or somewhere in there. I'd be real happy if history forgot me and one person came out of my ministry like a Billy Graham.

There's another no-name. Well, Billy Graham did remember that evangelist, but he was in nobody virtually in history. So don't don't hear all this is saying I'll never be a John Owen. So why should I listen to all that stuff?

There are all kinds of reasons to listen besides that. But I thought that was an encouraging one for me. Second thing that happened conversion was number one. Second thing was marriage to Mary Rook. Married 31 years to this woman then she died before he did.

We know absolutely nothing about her but this stunning fact they had 11 children and They all died 10 of them in infancy or childhood. One daughter lived to marry as a young adult the marriage broke up.

She came home. She died of consumption. He outlived 11 children and a wife. That's one child born and dead every three years of his adult life. That's all we know. We don't hear one echo in his writings of that.

Now. That's what I call frustrating. That's when I want a diary. That's when I want to get inside his heart and say how did you survive? Knowing what I know about what's coming in his life. When I read that fact years ago I just I kind of put it over.

John Owen said anybody that just goes on ministering. Losing a child every three years. I don't know if they all died that conveniently, you know spaced out or whether they I know. Two sons died in the 55 plague two little boys but how anybody just goes on ministering with glory like you read in his latter-day works of meditations on the glory of Christ.

Something's going on in that man's heart. I want to know about Just with that fact alone. Something is going on that. I want to know about Number three event that happened in those early years in London in his late 20s the publishing of his first book.

He lived just a few years after the big hubbub in Holland between the remonstrance the Armenians and the Calvinists with the production of the five points and then the the Synod of Dort and he studied all of that and that was hot on his agenda, and so he wrote a book with this preface like title a display of Arminianism.

Being a discovery of the old Pelagian idol free will with the new goddess Contingency advancing themselves into the throne of God in heaven to the prejudice of his grace Providence and supreme dominion over the children of men.

That's the title of the book. And and and you don't need to read it, you know exactly what he he thinks Accepted that Owen is one of the most exegetical of the Puritans and therefore if you care about biblical Foundations which you ought to do then you will want to read that or another.

So that launched him into his public career. He was now a Controversialist and a well-known Puritan Pastor so the fourth thing that happened that was the third the fourth thing that happened in those days was he became a pastor.

He got a little church a small parish in Fordham, Essex July 16 1643 27 years old he gets his first parish. He had been making money by being chaplains and tutors until that time. Now that's important because he was a pastor all of his life essentially he's going to be more than that.

But these books that you read here most of them I don't know if that's true the practical ones anyway came out of his pastoral preaching ministry. He was a pastor, especially of the last 20 years of his life.

Keep that in mind. He's not a professional Theologian making money by teaching in a university. He is a Pastor and the fifth thing that happened in those days Was the invitation to speak in Parliament in 1646 he's now 30 years old an Extraordinary honor to be asked to address the House of Commons.

There was no House of Lords in that period and He well, maybe there was I think of another period at 1646 at any rate. He's addressing Parliament and he was catapulted then not only into a controversialist role Theologically, but a political role and he was a political animal for the next 14 Years, he was known in the political Circles.

John Owen, Cromwell, and Political Power

Oliver Cromwell the protector the substitute for the king during those 20 years or so made John Owen his chaplain as he went up and slaughtered the Scots and went over and slaughtered the the Irish and He took along Cromwell to preach to his troops and to give theological Justification for what he was doing which Owen was happy to do.

He believed very much that God's hand was on Oliver Cromwell and that what was happening Against the Presbyterianism of England and the protectorate was of the devil and therefore he interpreted all of those Military victories as divine victories and Maybe they were.

He even was asked to preach The day after Parliament executed Charles first. And he did and he called it just retribution from God because of the sins of Charles The first so you can see how entangled this man was in the contemporary politics of his day.

Then Cromwell made him the Dean of Christ Church Oxford that's both a college and a cathedral and from 1651 to 1660 he was the Dean of this school and About let's see four of those years. I believe are five.

He was elevated also simultaneously to the vice chancellorship of Oxford. Now when I began to read this stuff about chaplain military entanglements Speaking to Parliament traveling to Scotland and Ireland a dean of a school a vice chancellor of a university Said and this man is studying theology and writing the likes of the death of death in the death of Christ when When does he do that?

I just the question I began to pose is how do you even be a Christian in? That atmosphere let alone study let alone write let alone write stuff that lasts 300 years. I just kind of Took my breath away as I saw what this man's life began to look like.

Let's give you a summary here at Oxford his responsibilities were for the services of worship. He preached in the cathedral and the college chapel. He was responsible for the choice of the students the appointment of the chaplain the provision of the tutorial facilities the administration of discipline the oversight of the property the collection of the rents and tithes the gift of the livings and the care of the almsman of the church hospital and He was trying to Establish the whole thing under the Word of God with frequent ministry of the Word.

His life was simply overwhelmed with pressure. I Can't imagine what his family like must family life. He was losing children 16 55 was the middle of his tenure at the university and we know two of his sons died in the plague that year in his closing address when he was relieved of his duties finally when the end of the interregnum came and Charles the second Returned he gave this closing address.

Labors have been numberless Besides submitting to enormous expense often when brought to the brink of death on your account. Then you'd say to a university community. I have been brought near to death on your account.

I Have hated these limbs and these this feeble body which was ready to desert my mind. The reproaches of the vulgar have been disregarded the envy of others has been overcome in these Circumstances, I wish you all prosperity and bid you farewell 22 published works during those nine years.

I don't think he slept. I Really believe in fact we know that he recorded at age 56 that he regretted as a student at Oxford only Sleeping four hours a night because it was taking its toll on his health as a middle-aged Man, so I assumed the same thing was probably true.

When did you write his books when everybody else went to bed? That's my guess. I don't know how else he might have done it. One of the books that he published during that time was the Saints perseverance.

I don't think I brought that alone 660 pages to settle that issue and one biography called it the most masterly vindication of the Perseverance of the Saints in the English tongue while he was Dean and vice-chancellor and losing his children and Disciplining vulgar students who made him want to die.

He was so depressed. Most of us, you know think if we if we experience something like that, we just have to ask for leave of absence. We couldn't preach the next Sunday let alone write 660 pages. This man was made of something strange or God was doing something unusual.

He wrote the mortification of sin during those years is where I recommend that you start. If you haven't read any of Owen, he wrote of communion with God. One of the sweetest of books during those Oxford years.

He wrote of temptation the nature and power of it during those years. In other words, he does it wasn't just writing Doctrinally controversial stuff. He was writing stuff that when you read it make you feel like he was a monk exalting in his personal communion with God.

Which is in fact what he was doing. I'm gonna get to that later on. Well, he was fired because when the king returned his Standards of Puritan life and thought were no longer what the king wanted and he was relieved and for the next 20 years 1660 until he died 23 years.

He was a kind of fugitive Pastor hard to get a handle on my work in those days. But evidently he kind of moved around because it was dangerous to be a Puritan pastor. You couldn't preach to more than X number of people and you couldn't preach within certain miles of so on and so he just kind Of moved around which must have also destroyed his family life.

But he didn't ever go to jail like John Bunyan did. We'll talk about that in a minute, too. One of the interesting things that happened during his life was that he shifted from being a Presbyterian to a Congregationalist.

He did this by reading John Cotton pastor in Boston John Cotton's book the keys of the kingdom and When he read it he was changed he gave up his Presbyterianism he embraced Congregationalism and became known as the Atlas and Patriarch of Independency.

It also bumped him up very high in the echelon of those who were crying out for toleration. Nothing like the toleration we would think of today toleration within orthodoxy. He basically wanted Anglicans Presbyterians and Congregationalist Baptists and so on to be able to be free to worship According to their own desires in England and he wrote books you can find him in the collected works.

Arguing for this one of his students was William Penn who became a Quaker who came over and preached toleration in the States. And another interesting thing for me a Baptist is that there's a letter in here written to the governor of Massachusetts in 1669 pleading with him and his congregational peers to stop making life hard for the Baptists.

So that gives you a flavor back when he was Dean he had total legal authority To put a stop to all Anglican worship as a Puritan in Oxford and he permitted right across the hall from his own Rooms a little Anglican conventicle to worship every Lord's Day.

So Owen was an interesting guy who preached a sermon after the execution of Charles one and call it the will of God. But he has this tolerant strain in him that says within orthodoxy We shouldn't persecute Presbyterians or Congregationalist or Anglican.

John Owen's Pastoral Ministry and the Providence of John Bunyan's Imprisonment

He was a pastor during these years and he loved his people. Even though he's on the run moving around and even when he couldn't be with them He wrote things like this to them. Although I am absent from you in body I am in mind and affection and spirit present with you and in your assemblies for I hope you will be found my crown and rejoicing in the day of the Lord.

He said the first and principal duty of every pastor is to feed the flock By diligent preaching of the Word of God and I assume that's what he made his top Priority and that's where many of these excuse me.

That's where many of these works come from. It isn't clear to me why he didn't go to jail. I can't figure out how it worked that some Puritans and independence in in those years between 1660 and 1689 when the act of toleration was passed why some of them went to jail and some didn't for example John Bunyan was a contemporary and spent as you know, 12 years in the Bedford Jail.

Now, there's a really interesting story here I've got to tell you because this is another glorious illustration of behind a frowning Providence. There hides a smiling face and we need all the stories we can get because we are spring-loaded not to believe that John Bunyan was a great preacher, but he was a tinker.

He was simply had no education and King Charles Who for one reason or another did respect Owen even though he didn't like his principles asked him one time. Why do you go to hear Bunyan preach an? Educated university trained world-class scholar like you and his answer was Could I possess the tinker's ability for preaching please your majesty.

I would gladly relinquish all my learning. Owen Finds out that Bunyan is in prison. He works and works and works with all his connections in high places to get him released and he failed. Bad right the biography.

I was reading that told this story said and after his failure in 1676 Bunyan walks out of the Bedford Jail with a manuscript the worth and importance of which can scarcely be Comprehended was the failure to get Bunyan out of jail a failure.

Ask yourself after the Bible. There is no other book in the world. I believe Printed so often or having such a widespread Christian influence as pilgrims progress. Had Owen Succeeded We wouldn't have Problem brothers you must not judge quickly your prison experiences.

You must not judge them Quickly this morning. I learned within ten minutes the smile behind the frowning phone call. I bet Bunyan died. He died five years after Owen without knowing That it would have been worth.

There's a little the story is not over. Owen reads the manuscript and says I think this is worth. But here's a tinker he knows zero about the publishing industry. He doesn't know any got no connections.

Owen knows everybody in London. He's a big wheel. He doesn't get persecuted because he's got such connections. He finds Nathanael Ponder who's been publishing his books now for what dozen years and he says Ponder publish this book and Ponder makes a myth and Sends John Bunyan's book into orbit.

So Owen succeeded. After he failed or succeeded he succeeded painfully and he succeeded Pleasant and life is just made up like that for Christians. That's all we do is succeed either painfully and regretfully or Pleasant.

He died 1683. August 24 was buried In Bun Hill fields and five years later Bunyan is buried in the same place today. Which I thought was just a tremendous little Providence of the Lord to say here's a man who lived his whole life for toleration's sake and Here's a Baptist tinker and they're lying dead beside each other and both of them today speaking Majestically, but Bunyan speaking a lot Than the scholar now, I want to step back from this life and ask this question What what made him tick.

John Owen's Passion for Holiness

What was the core? What was the center the essence of the man's? Life. J .i. Packer and Sinclair Ferguson Say that they were most influenced by his his spiritual Insight into the nature of the heart and how it works in holiness.

In fact Packer you may have heard the story. You can read it in the introduction to Houston's edition of mortification and from Multnomah. When Packer was a student at Oxford, I believe I'm sure about that New convert Young adult he came under the influence of some very perfectionistic people in the holiness movement.

He had no categories for understanding his ongoing temptations and sins in this group he said he came this close to suicide and The rescue was John Owen Tells that story. I've heard it on tape. I've seen it in two books.

He loves the story. I'll read you. I think I have a sentence here. No, I don't have lost its way back. But he says I think I would have lost my head or either gone into some kind of crazy fanaticism if it hadn't been for John Owen on The mortification of sin and the the nature power and prevalency of indwelling sin.

Owen gave him a category to understand his heart. I think what made Owen unique was his mingling of holiness with his great achievements. Here's his own testimony to what is Main in his life. This is from the preface to the mortification of sin.

Volume six if you're gonna get one volume of the works get volume six. I hope I may own in sincerity That my heart's desire unto God and the chief design of my life. When I ever read something like that underline it.

That's a big statement. The chief design of my life and my heart's desire are that mortification and universal holiness may be Promoted in my own and in the hearts and ways of others to the glory of God.

That so the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be adorned in all Things and the same note was struck 25 years later in 1681 When he published the grace and duty of being spiritually minded so for 25 years at least he was driven by this passion to Mortify the sin in his life and to grow in holiness and to do whatever he could do in Parliament among the military Among the University in the churches among the independents to foster Holiness to adorn the gospel to the glory of God.