John Owen’s Principles Of Nonconformity

By James E. Dolezal

“The utmost of our aim is but to pass the residue of our pilgrimage in peace, serving God in the way of our devotion.” [1] The Puritan divine John Owen (1616-1683) wrote these words in defense of himself and his fellow Protestant Nonconformists in the year 1667. [2] As a Nonconformist living in the middle of seventeenth-century England, Owen experienced both the triumph and defeat of his ecclesiastical convictions. He is remembered for many roles—pastor, scholar, writer, statesman, and congregational churchman. To these important roles must be added that of leader in the cause of English Protestant Nonconformity. [3]

In his first book-length treatise defending Nonconformity, Of Schism (1657), Owen reveals his reluctance to be a contender for the cause: “I confess I would rather, much rather, spend all my time and days in making up and healing the breaches and schisms that are amongst Christians than one hour in justifying our divisions, even wherein, on the one side, they are capable of a fair defense.” [4] And yet this “healing” ministry was not to be Owen’s lot. Conformity to the Church of England was the most explosive ecclesiastical issue in England throughout Owen’s lifetime, and he is rightly understood as a man embroiled in that historical debate.

Though convinced of their necessity, Owen did not seem to regard his contributions to nonconformist thought as his most significant. [5] Indeed, the modern reader of Owen may have difficulty sustaining interest in his lengthy treatment of such time-bound controversies as uniformity to the state-church, forced conformity in worship, and charges of ecclesiastical schism. This may account for the comparative neglect of volumes 13, 14, and 15 of his Works.

After the Act of Toleration, instituted under William and Mary in May of 1689 (six years after Owen’s death), Nonconformity came to have an accepted place in English church life. Naturally, interest in Owen’s highly nuanced defense of Nonconformity waned after 1689. Among North American readers, in the absence of an established state-church, his writings about Nonconformity are even more unappreciated. But, as distant as Owen’s ecclesiastical context is from the modern reader, a study of his contributions to Nonconformity will still help moderns formulate their own ecclesiological convictions regarding the present circumstances of the church. [6]

The defense and maintenance of Nonconformity comprise what is probably the most recurring theme in Owen’s writings. He would have preferred that this not be the case. Often he bemoans the uncharitable and petty way in which the debate is conducted. Though he sees Nonconformity as a weighty and important matter, he found the debate over minutiae to be often exasperating. In his second response to Daniel Cawdrey, a Presbyterian minister who charged Owen’s brand of Nonconformity with schism, Owen expresses his weariness with the debate: “I must acknowledge, that the state of the controversy between us is now degenerated into such a useless strife of words as that I dare publicly own engagements into studies of so much more importance unto the interest of truth, piety, and literature, as that I cannot, with peace in my own retirement, be much further conversant therein.” He adds to this, “I know no man whose patience will enable him to abide always in the consideration of things to so little purpose.” [7] Owen believed it was right to contend for Nonconformity, but often he felt that the debate itself became petty and purposeless. Far from descending into the “useless strife of words” that Owen so disdained, it is the aim of this essay to set out the two driving principles of Owen’s Nonconformity.

The Heart Of Owen’s Ecclesiastical Nonconformity

“O that that wisdom which is an eminent fruit of the gospel might flourish among us!—it is ‘first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated;’—that we might have less writing, and more praying!—less envy, and more charity! that all evil surmisings, which are works of the flesh, might have no toleration in our hearts, but be banished for nonconformity to the golden rule of love and peace!” [8] John Owen preached these words before Parliament on April 29, 1646, at the close of the first English civil war. They capture the real essence of his ecclesiastical Nonconformity as being a desire for peace and unity among brethren. Rather than refusing toleration to fellow Christians, men should show intolerance to their own envy and suspicion of others.

The mainline Nonconformists of the 1630s split generally into two parties in the 1640s: the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. [9] Apparently there had not necessarily been a uniform principle(s) of Nonconformity during the days of Episcopalian prelatical dominance. Different men had different reasons for non-compliance. Furthermore, men’s reasons for non-compliance to the state-church were subject to modification as outward circumstances changed. [10]

The twin convictions at the heart of Owen’s Nonconformity were liberty of conscience and toleration. These must be understood within the context of Owen’s desire for unity and his utter disdain of imposed uniformity. Indeed, this abhorrence of forced uniformity is what gave rise to his appeals for liberty of conscience and toleration.

These principles were the touchstones to which Owen repeatedly returned throughout his lifelong struggle for the cause of Nonconformity. In his Discourse Concerning Evangelical Love, Church Peace, and Unity (1672), Owen plied his liberty argument against the Episcopalian demand for conformity: “...for what do we do less than renounce the privilege of our liberty, purchased for us at a high rate and price...whilst we bring ourselves in bondage unto the observation of such things in the worship of God as we judge neither commanded by him nor tending unto our own edification, but merely because by them ordained?” [11] For Owen, liberty of conscience is not the freedom of every man to worship as he pleases, but the liberty of the Christian, purchased for him by Christ, to worship according to the dictates of a renewed conscience held captive to the Word of God.

Of course, the expressions “liberty of conscience” and “toleration” do not signify the same thing in every age or context. Modern readers tend to assume that liberty of conscience is akin to the attitude of indifference. Likewise, toleration is often associated with a “live and let live” approach to religion. But liberty of conscience and toleration were not such passive concepts in the minds of many of their seventeenth-century advocates. To appreciate his appeal to these ideals we must establish what Owen understood by them.

Liberty Of Conscience

William Perkins (1558-1602) was the first of the English Puritans to give extensive attention to the role of conscience in matters of religious practice. He argued that “God hath now in the new testament given a libertie to the conscience.” [12] The plea for liberty of conscience became common during the Elizabethan era. L. John Van Til observes that “Elizabethan appeals to conscience, with few exceptions, were associated with the problem of the individual and his practice of religion.” [13] The dispute over conscience that emerged in the late sixteenth century was to factor into Owen’s defense of Nonconformity in the seventeenth century. Van Til explains the two views of conscience that took hold in the English controversy: “The government position assumed that exercise of conscience was a practice to be granted and tolerated by the crown or its agents. The members of Parliament and the theologian Perkins assumed that an authority higher than the crown was the source of authority for conscience.” [14] Owen came to endorse the latter position.

The question of liberty of conscience was preeminently a question of conscience’s proper authority. Whatever liberty was pleaded for was to be qualified by the grantor of that liberty. In Owen’s view, the grantor of liberty of conscience is God, not man. God is the ultimate and direct reference point for conscience. Therefore its liberty is in regard to Him. Owen explains what conscience is:

Conscience is the territory or domain of God in man, which he hath so reserved unto himself that no human power can possibly enter into it or dispose of it in any wise. But in this work of conviction of sin, the word of God, the Scripture, entereth into the conscience of a sinner, takes possession of it, disposeth it unto peace or trouble, by its laws or rules, and no otherwise.... Were not this the word of God, how should it come thus to speak in his name and to act his authority in the consciences of men as it doth? When once it begins this work, conscience immediately owns a new rule, a new law, a new government, in order to the judgment of God upon it and all its actions.... No power under heaven can cause conscience to think, act, or judge otherwise than it doth by its immediate respect unto God; for it is the mind’s self-judging with respect unto God, and what is not so is no act of conscience. [15]

Owen insists that the right of non-compliance to the state-church on account of conscience is not merely an abstract law of liberty but is rooted in the nature of God, not in man.

It is about religion and the worship of God that we are discoursing. Now, in these things no man ever thought that it was originally a right of subjects, as subjects, abstracting from the consideration of the authority of God, that should exempt them from a subjection to the sovereign power; for though some of the ancients discourse of large that it is of natural right and equity that every one should worship God as he would himself, yet they founded this equity in the nature of God and the authority of his commands. This exemption, then, ariseth merely…because they are subject to a superior power in heaven, which excuseth them from the duty of obedience to their superiors on earth, when they cannot give it without rebellion against God. [16]

So, God’s authority and commands were the conditioners of the liberty of conscience for which Owen contended. Notice what this is not: it is not freedom for freedom’s sake, nor freedom for man’s sake, but it is liberty for God’s sake. Again, Owen clarified that conscience is free only inasmuch as it is subject to God: “for no man pleads exemption from subjection unto, yea, from giving active obedience unto, the authority and commands of the magistrate, even in things religious, but merely on account of his subjection to the authority of God in heaven; and, where this is so, he is set at liberty…from all contrary commands of men.” [17] The liberty that Owen had in mind was the liberty to answer directly to God in matters of religion. It was construed not so much as freedom from the state-church as it was freedom unto the supreme authority of God, especially as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. If God’s demands for worship should conflict with the imposed practice of any given church or churches, then the Christian is free to refuse conformity to the state-church or magistrate and to render obedience to God; indeed, he is constrained to obey God in such an instance.

This liberty of conscience was purchased for the Christian by the blood of Christ. Owen writes, “In his death was the procurement of the liberty of his disciples completely finished, as unto conscience.” [18] Christ freed His disciples from the Pharisaical innovations and the Mosaic regulations of worship. Owen saw no threat to his position in the argument that Christ’s disciples, though supposedly free from the external and man-made innovations of worship, continued to worship according to those old ceremonies. This, Owen explains, is “in a way of connivance and forbearance, to continue unto that people an allowance of the observation of their old worship until the time appointed for its utter removal and actual casting away should come.” [19] In other words, the early Christians’ continuance in the temple (Acts 2:46) was an exceptional practice unique to that transitional period from old covenant worship to new covenant worship. It is neither a precedent for Christians to obey human innovations in worship, nor a prescription for Christian obedience to the state-endorsed form of worship. Owen points out that in a short while the old forms of worship were completely torn down and the church was forever freed from following human innovations. In Acts 15, the decision was made that Jewish customs could not be imposed on the Gentile converts to Christianity. [20] And so, Owen concludes, “By these degrees [i.e., the removal of the Mosaic forms of worship and the decision of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15] were the disciples of Christ put into a complete actual possession of that liberty which he had preached to them, and purchased for them.” [21]

Since liberty of conscience was bought by Christ’s blood, it is not the prerogative of any man to surrender his conscience. This holds true especially in matters of worship. Whatever God commands, man must obey. The conscience is as binding as God’s law is binding. So Owen states, “But, plainly, as to the commands of conscience, they are of the same extent with the commands of God;—if these respect only the inward man, or the mind, conscience doth no more; if they respect outward actions, conscience doth so also.” [22] In this statement Owen was controverting Samuel Parker’s assertion that liberty of conscience pertains only to man’s inward evaluation of things, and so does not leave him free in the outward practice of religion. In other words, by restricting conscience’s liberty only to man’s mind or opinions, and not his outward habit of religion, Parker undermined the freedom that Christ had secured for the Christian to worship without human innovations.

What good is a liberty of conscience that bars men from acting upon its dictates? Men are not free to refuse obedience to conscience. Indeed, if men are obligated to obey the magistrate in anything against conscience, the overthrow of true religion must follow. Owen explains, “If conscience be allowed to make its judgment of what is good or evil, what is duty or sin, and no obligation be allowed to ensue from thence unto a suitable practice, a wide door is opened unto atheism, and thereby the subversion of all religion and government in the world.” [23] Again, the liberty of conscience is a liberty to obey Christ. The internal liberty that Parker wanted to grant was, to Owen’s mind, not Christian liberty at all because it denied to Christ the kingly power to command observance to His own institutions, and, rather, granted that power over outward worship to a lesser, earthly king. [24]

Inasmuch as Samuel Parker sought to make the mind out to be the seat of liberty of conscience, Owen granted that the mind’s actions are naturally free from outward compulsion. But, he insisted, “liberty is no proper affection of the mind or understanding.” Rather, “it is the will that is the proper seat of liberty.” [25] This means that liberty of conscience is not restricted merely to man’s freedom to evaluate himself in the light of God’s Word; rather, it is the freedom of the Christian to actually order his outward practice according to his understanding of God’s revealed will. It is liberty to act, not merely to reflect. For Owen, this translated into the liberty to refuse conformity to any outward form of religion that was not consistent with the dictates of a conscience properly instructed by the Scriptures.

One final aspect of Owen’s conception of liberty of conscience that we must consider is the relation between liberty of conscience and Christian liberty. Are these two notions identical? Owen’s answer to this question determined particularly how he treated liberty of conscience for those who were not Christians. He did not consider them to be identical: “Liberty of conscience is of natural right, Christian liberty is a gospel privilege, though both may be pleaded in unwarrantable impositions on conscience.” [26] With this said, it is still difficult to detect any sharp distinction between these two concepts in Owen’s writing. Mark Harbour points out that “Owen…generally used the term of ‘liberty of conscience’ and not ‘Christian liberty’ to refer to consciences made free by Christ.” [27] This still leaves open the question of whether Owen saw a place for liberty of conscience in those who were not truly Christians. In the citation above, he seems to indicate that he believes that there is such a liberty that is of “natural right.” But, in light of the discussion thus far, with its emphasis upon liberty to obey God, what was the nature of this “natural right” variety of liberty of conscience?

In a certain sense, Owen saw the natural conscience (or unrenewed conscience) as also under direct obligation to God, and therefore to be taken seriously in its pleas for liberty from imposition. In responding to Parker’s charge that liberty of conscience would breed atheism, Owen stated, “For my part, I have had this advantage by my own obscurity and small consideration in the world, as never to converse with any persons that did or durst question the being or providence of God, either really or in pretence.” [28] Even the consciences of natural men are subjected to the law of God. Referencing Romans 2:14-15, Owen writes in his commentary on Hebrews, “No men, whilst the natural principle of conscience remains in them, can cast off all the convictions of sin.” [29] But what about when conscience fails to convict of sin, or worse, being in error, compels men to sin? Did Owen still allow such a seared or erring conscience a plea for liberty? It does not seem so. In his own confession, the Savoy Declaration, following the Westminster Confession (chapter XX), we discover the boundaries of liberty of conscience:

God alone is Lord of the Conscience, and hath left it free from the Doctrines and Commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or not contained in it; so that to believe such Doctrines, or to obey such Commands out of conscience, is to betray true Liberty of Conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy Liberty of Conscience, and Reason also. [30]

Apparently, liberty of conscience extends only in so far as it is subject to God’s Word and is not deceived by man-made doctrines and innovations. Indeed, Owen seems almost to deny that an erring conscience is truly conscience: “No power under heaven can cause conscience to think, act, or judge otherwise than it doth by its immediate respect unto God; for it is the mind’s self-judging with respect unto God, and what is not so is no act of conscience.” [31] So, the unregenerate man might plead liberty of conscience inasmuch as his conscience was rightly compelling him to obey God, which it did at times; but, if his conscience should dictate anything contrary to God’s commands, or not commanded by God, it destroyed its liberty and is no longer acting as conscience. This begins to explain the difficulty in understanding Owen’s view of liberty of conscience as it pertains to those who were not Christians. Sometimes Owen spoke of their liberty as belonging to natural right, but at other times he denied all legitimacy of their appeal to liberty of conscience. Owen defined liberty of conscience as the freedom of man to obey God and, therefore, to refuse compliance to any imposed, man-made innovation that either contradicts God’s commands, or goes beyond them.

Toleration

Now, we also must consider what Owen meant when he pled for toleration. For Owen, the plea for toleration, though at times relying on the fact of liberty of conscience, was not exclusively controlled by that consideration. [32] He opposed universal toleration (which would surely shake ecclesiastical peace), [33] even as he opposed an unqualified liberty of conscience. But the dangers of universal tolerance were no argument against every form of religious toleration. Furthermore, the Scriptures press, command, and commend unity among Christ’s churches. But, Owen explains, “every agreement and consent amongst men professing the name of Christ, is not the unity and peace commended in the Scripture.” [34] We must appreciate what Owen is saying here: inasmuch as unity does not mean uniformity in every matter, it must be sought through some other means than conformity. That other means is toleration. [35]

Owen stood against certain forms of toleration as well as certain forms of intolerance. He declares against absolute toleration: “if by toleration you mean…a universal concession of unbounded liberty, or rather, bold, unbridled licentiousness, for every one to vent what he pleaseth, and to take what course seems good in his own eyes, in things concerning religion and the worship of God, I cannot give my vote for it.” [36] Likewise he declares against the persecuting form of intolerance: “if by non-toleration you mean...[that] they were not to be endured in any place who dissent only in not-fundamentals from that which is established, but to be hated...as the Christians of old, or to have their new derided lights extinguished in...a Nero’s bonfire,—into the secrets of them that are thus minded let not my soul descend.” [37] In rejecting these two opposite extremes, Owen sought to locate himself somewhere between the two, not allowing unlimited toleration, but also resolved against the persecuting form of intolerance.

In his 1646 Country Essay, Owen submitted nine rules intended to nuance his argument for toleration. First, no compliance was to be given to those errors or heresies “contrary to sound doctrine...[and] especially if credibly supposed to shake any fundamentals of the common faith.” Instead, men ought, “with all their strength and abilities, in all lawful ways...to oppose, suppress, and overthrow them...that they may not, as noxious weeds and tares, overgrow and choke the good corn amongst which they are covertly scattered.” [38]

Second, all doctrines in themselves tending undeniably to the disturbance of the civil state ought to be suppressed by lawful means. [39] Owen laid the stress here on doctrines that inherently subverted the peace of a commonwealth. From this he exempted all sound doctrine, which, though at times was perceived as a threat to the government (e.g., Christ being accused of sedition by the Jews), did not really advocate any form of sedition. As examples of those who taught doctrines inherently opposed to the safety of commonwealths, Owen cited the Jesuitical papists and the Anabaptists at Munster.

Third, heresies or “mispersuasions” that were attended by any notorious sin in practice, such as the Papists’ “express abominable idolatry,” were to be severely punished. The punishment, according to Owen, was not for error, but for manifest works of the flesh, “easy to be discerned, [and] known to all.” [40] No appeal to conscience in such matters was legitimate as “such ‘evil communication’ as ‘corrupteth good manners,’ is not to be tolerated.” [41]

Fourth, dissenters from the established church were to be tolerated so long as they did not “revile, traduce, deride, or otherwise expose to vulgar contempt, by words or actions, the way owned by authority.” [42] Owen clearly advocated the state’s support of ministers in the national church, being one himself at the time of writing, and was willing to tolerate those outside so long as they did not use their freedom to inveigh against Christ’s ministers remaining within the Church of England. Underlying this was Owen’s concern for unity among Christians, which was subverted by such open opposition.

Fifth, men were to be sensitive to how difficult it is to determine what is a heresy and who is a heretic. Owen writes, “[I]t is a most difficult thing to determine a heresy, with an assurance that they are so out of danger of erring in that determination as to make it a ground of rigorous proceedings against those of whom they have so concluded.” [43] Though Owen confessed that there is infallibility in the rule of truth, there is not such infallibility in the men who sought to discover that rule. Errors usually involved things hard to be understood and so should not be hastily prosecuted. Owen offered the following counsel in support of restraint in suppressing heresy: “Ignorance of men’s invincible prejudices, of their convictions, strong persuasions, desires, aims, hopes, fears, inducements,—sensibleness of our own infirmities, failings, misapprehensions, darkness, knowing but in part,—should work in us a charitable opinion of poor erring creatures, that do it perhaps with as upright, sincere hearts and affections as some enjoy truth.” [44] With all of his imprecision in this point, we should appreciate that Owen was attempting to advocate toleration based on the fact that even orthodox men may err or pass judgment too swiftly.

Sixth, supposing that dissenters did not clearly transgress the conditions of rules two, three, and four, those in authority ought to grant to them the same measure of toleration that they would have desired if their roles were reversed and those dissenters were in authority. Somewhat surprisingly to some, no doubt, Owen used this argument to advocate toleration even for Papists. Of course, this would not have applied to Catholics who were of the “missionary party” (i.e., those who had not taken the Oath of Allegiance in 1606), [45] as were the Jesuits mentioned in rule two. But how any Romanists were exempted from the strictures of rule three is left unclear in Owen’s discussion. [46] His main concern in this sixth rule was to point out that heresy in itself is not of the same universal offense and threat to society as other crimes, such as robbery. (To those who agreed with the heretic he did not appear to be heretical and therefore was no obvious threat.) As simplistic as this argument may appear, Owen was making the point that the principle of toleration was not merely a question of who had the truth and who was in error. Apparently, he was willing to grant toleration even to those to whom he denied the plea of liberty of conscience. At this point, his disdain for forced uniformity was the primary reason for promoting toleration, bypassing altogether the issue of whether these Papists had a right to liberty of conscience.

Seventh, Owen could not countenance the slaying of heretics for heresy. In this he seemingly disallowed banishment or perpetual imprisonment as well. [47] Furthermore, he rejected the defense of such severe punishment on the ground that all heretics were guilty of blasphemy and should undergo the law of blasphemy: “we cannot be too cautious how we place men in that damnable series.” [48] Also, he rejected such persecutions pleaded for on the grounds that to spread such errors was destructive to souls. Many things were destructive to souls that were not punishable by death. Owen opined that this simplistic logic (the need to protect souls from error) could easily be used to warrant the indiscriminate killing of pagans and Muslims at home and abroad.

Owen’s eighth rule argued that truth invariably suffers more from persecution than does error. The gospel and the early history of the church gave no warrant for persecuting heresy or for any forced uniformity. The right to persecute heretics was the very argument upon which Rome vindicated the killing of thousands of Christians. “The Roman stories of killing heretics, are all martyrologies,” writes Owen. [49]

Ninth, returning to the fifth and sixth rules, Owen reminded the Puritans who might want to impose uniformity and persecute dissenters that it had not been so long since they were persecuted for their own convictions as Nonconformists. Just as they were not guilty of sedition to the state in their dissent, so they should not assume that any who refused conformity to the new settlement of the English Church were necessarily seditious themselves. [50]

Conclusion

Owen apparently employed, on different occasions, two different conceptions or aspects of liberty of conscience. This dual conception does not necessarily need to be construed as confusing or inconsistent on his part; it may be explained by the different circumstances that concerned him when he wrote. Owen was not simply writing these things about liberty of conscience in a historical vacuum, or merely as systematic contributions to a study of anthropology or ethics. He wrote out of concern for men and women being persecuted, or threatened by persecution, all around him. Sometimes he was seeking to emphasize the Christian’s liberty of conscience and so he defined that liberty in terms exclusive of the unregenerate. At other times, he was concerned to show that the consciences of unregenerate men could not be subdued by external force and that some inherent aspect of freedom was properly ascribed to conscience as conscience.

As to toleration, it was never absolute in Owen’s consideration. It was bounded by the need for civil security of the state on the one side and the promotion of the gospel, including the protection of the orthodox, on the other side. Unorthodoxy did not automatically threaten either of these civil or religious concerns, and thus should not have been persecuted for merely being unorthodox. Furthermore, men ought to be very hesitant to civilly censure anyone for error, seeing how prone all finite and sinful creatures, even orthodox Protestants, are to err.

Often, toleration was to be extended to those who did not enjoy the religious liberty of conscience. So long as the dissenter was not practicing an open or obvious sin, and was no threat to the state or the worship of true religion, he might be tolerated and encouraged to conformity in the truth by spiritual means, but never by forced uniformity.

Notes

1. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (London: Johnstone & Hunter, 1850-53; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995-2004), XIII: 224. Hereafter this will simply be listed as Works, followed by the volume and page number(s). The reprint edition contains only 23 volumes of the original 24, leaving out the Latin works (vol. 17 in the original Goold edition) and renumbering volumes 18-24 as volumes 17-23. I am grateful to Dr. Robert W. Oliver for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the material in this article.
2. Michael Watts offers a succinct explanation how the term “nonconformist” was used in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England: “It was used in the reign of Elizabeth of Puritans who were in communion with the Church of England but who declined to conform to certain practices prescribed by the Prayer Book of 1559. Only after 1662, when the state required of its clergy their ‘unfeigned assent and consent’ to everything in that Prayer Book did the word Nonconformist come to mean separation from the Church of England.” In Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 1. John Owen’s public career spanned from 1639 to his death in 1683. Through the course of these years his commitment to the practice of Nonconformity was unflagging; even when he personally could conform to the demands of the state-church, as during the interregnum period (1649-1660) under Oliver and Richard Cromwell, he defended the prerogative of others to refuse conformity to the established church. In other words, his defense of Nonconformity was not predicated exclusively upon his personal desire for indulgence; he sought indulgence for others when he himself needed none.
3. See Peter Toon’s chapter, “Protestant Nonconformist,” in Toon, God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1971), 123-49.
4. Owen, Works, XIII: 95.
5. Arguably, his writings on the Holy Spirit, communion with God, sin and temptation, and the seven-volume commentary on Hebrews are among his most significant and enduring works.
6. Owen’s contributions will certainly aid the patient reader in thinking about how the church relates to the state, how the local church relates to Protestantism at large as well as to other local churches, and how the church ought to conduct herself under various degrees of persecution. Furthermore, his nonconformist writings may greatly benefit modern evangelical churches in some Eastern European countries where the Orthodox Church regards them as sectarian and schismatic. Also, some of his contributions may be found helpful to those Christians who presently suffer under Islamic intolerance. Robert W. Oliver has suggested these last two possibilities to the present writer.
7. Owen, Works, XIII: 280.
8. Ibid., VIII: 33.
9. Martin Sutherland has observed that “[s]napshots of self-consciously different nonconformist ecclesiologies can be derived from the Presbyterian Westminster Confession (1647) and the Independent Savoy Declaration (1658)” (Peace, Toleration, and Decay: The Ecclesiology of Later Stuart Dissent [Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2003], 27). We may safely group the Particular Baptists with the Independents in this matter. Of course, the various sects made up numerous other tributaries of Nonconformity, but they remained outside of mainstream English Protestantism.
10. We could just as well apply Gerald Cragg’s evaluation of the word “Puritan” to the term “Nonconformist”: “It indicates a common outlook; [but] as soon as official pressures are removed, it ceases to stand for common convictions” (Freedom and Authority: A Study of English Thought in the Early Seventeenth Century [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975], 154-55). This certainly warrants our investigation into Owen’s own particular principles of Nonconformity in this essay.
11. Owen, Works, XV: 147.
12. William Perkins, The Workes of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Universitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, 3 vols. (London: John Legatt, 1612-1613), I: 529. The important feature that later on factors into Owen’s conception of this liberty is that God, not man, grants this liberty to the conscience. On a historiographical note, it is perplexing that W. K. Jordan’s four-volume work, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, the most thorough study of its kind, gives virtually no attention to Perkins’s role in systematizing the doctrine of conscience, which helped to establish the foundation for so many Puritan pleas for toleration.
13. L. John Van Til, Liberty of Conscience: The History of a Puritan Idea (1972; repr., Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992), 5.
14. Ibid. Consider Perkins’s comment: “God alone makes laws binding conscience properly, and no creature can doe the like” (Workes, I: 529).
15. Owen, Works, IV: 96. In the context, Owen is making the greater argument about the power and authority of God’s Word. To Owen, the immediate power of God’s Word over the conscience is an indicator of its supreme authority. For our purposes it is important to discern Owen’s emphasis on the immediacy of God’s authority over each man’s conscience. Owen does not allow for intermediaries such as the magistrate, pope, or prelates. Cf. Works, XV: 43 on the immediacy of God’s authority over conscience.
16. Ibid., XIII: 453-54. This is Owen’s response to Samuel Parker’s insistence that man’s conscience is under the direct authority of the magistrate in regard to the worship of God. Parker, an Episcopalian, was a strident advocate of forced uniformity during the Restoration era (i.e., after the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660).
17. Ibid., XIII: 454. Owen is closely following the thought of Perkins at this point. Perkins writes, “Now, if humane lawes made after the grant of this libertie, bind conscience of themselves, then must they either take away the foresaid libertie, or diminish the same; but that they cannot doe: for that which is granted by an higher authoritie, namely God himselfe, cannot be revoked or repealed by the inferiour authoritie of any man” (Workes, I: 529).
18. Owen, Works, XV: 4.
19. Ibid., XV: 5.
20. Ibid., XV: 6.
21. Ibid., XV: 7.
22. Ibid., XIII: 443.
23. Ibid., XIII: 442. Parker insisted, contrary to Owen’s reasoning, that if men were allowed to follow the dictates of their own conscience in matters of worship, rebellion would necessarily follow: “to exempt religion and the Consciences of men from the Authority of the Supreme Power [e.g., the king of England] is but to expose the peace of Kingdoms to every wild and Fanatick Pretender, who may, when ever he pleases, under pretences of Reformation thwart and unsettle Government without controul; seeing no one can have any power to restrain the perswasions of his Conscience” (A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie, 3rd ed. [London: John Martyn, 1671], 14-15). Owen regarded Parker’s conclusion as a failure to distinguish the proper authority of the magistrate to suppress civil disturbance from his limited role of maintaining and protecting orthodox, Protestant Christianity (Works, XIII: 443). In Parker’s view there was no difference between the magistrate’s authority in civil matters and his authority over religious matters (Parker, Discourse, 10-11).
24. Owen, Works, XIII: 443.
25. Ibid., XIII: 440.
26. Ibid., XIII: 443.
27. Mark Kelan Harbour, “John Owen’s Doctrine of Church and State” (Th.M. thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary, 1991), 12.
28. Owen, Works, XIII: 364. This reflects what some might call Owen’s “pre-modern” context.
29. Ibid., XXI: 22.
30. A. G. Matthews, ed., The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (1658) (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1959), 103 (Chapter XXI: sect. II).
31. Owen, Works, IV: 96 (latter emphasis added). This would answer Thomas Edwards’s complaint about liberty of conscience being used as license: “we observe remarks like that of the servant giving notice: ‘I would have the liberty of my conscience, not to be catechized in the principles of religion.’” In Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), 138, cited in Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century, 2nd ed. (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1994), 5. Hill discusses the fear that as liberty of conscience became freedom of religion, freedom of religion would evolve into freedom from religion (ibid., 5).
32. Another controlling principle was his intense hatred of persecution and forced conformity. At times, he appeared willing to grant toleration to those to whom he would deny liberty of conscience (e.g., the “spiritual party” of Roman Catholics in England, that is, those who refused ultimate allegiance to the Pope). These two controls appear, at times, to contradict one another in that Owen denied liberty of conscience on the one hand, but refused to force conscience on the other. So, there is a religious freedom that is not liberty of conscience, per se, but rather is granted on the basis of how unreasonable and devastating intolerance is.
33. Owen, Works, VIII: 53.
34. Ibid., VIII: 54.
35. This has implications for Owen’s conception of liberty of conscience. Though liberty is freedom to obey God’s Word, it does not necessarily follow that every Christian will come to the same conclusion about what exactly God requires in worship. At one level this may present some difficulty for Owen’s insistence that conscience is not free when it believes things contrary to God’s Word. Who truly possesses liberty of conscience in the instance when two orthodox Christians disagree as to what God’s Word requires or prescribes (e.g., in regard to church government or the form of worship)? Owen would probably answer the question by appealing for toleration in regard to non-fundamental doctrines.
36. Ibid., VIII: 57-58. What he describes here has some similarities to the present day notion of “religious freedom,” particularly its emphasis on “un-boundedness.” We must understand that in advocating toleration of any kind Owen was moving into waters previously opposed by many Puritans. Blair Worden writes, “[M]ore often than not in puritan England, toleration was a dirty word. It stood not for an edifying principle but for an impious policy. To grant ‘a toleration’ was to make an expedient concession to wickedness.” Owen is obviously aware of these reservations about toleration. See Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” in Persecution and Toleration, ed. W. J. Sheils (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 200.
37. Ibid., VIII: 58.
38. Ibid. Though Owen recommended rooting up and throwing out such heretics, he qualified the acceptable means as “lawful ways,” and he did not describe precisely what these ways were. We should not necessarily read into this a recommendation of persecution. Also, notice that it was the shaking of fundamentals that most concerns Owen.
39. Ibid., VIII: 59.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid. Of course, there were those who objected to Owen’s estimation of what is manifestly sinful or fleshly.
42. Ibid., VIII: 59-60.
43. Ibid., VIII: 60.
44. Ibid., VIII: 61.
45. W. K. Jordan explains that the Oath of Allegiance was “designed to distinguish between those Catholics who upheld the political pretensions of the papacy and those who were interested only in their faith and were willing to renounce the papal claims” (The Development of Religious Toleration in England: From the Accession of James I to the Convention of the Long Parliament [1603-1640]. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936], 74).
46. When Owen penned these rules William Laud (who promoted many Roman-like practices) was already dead (having been executed in 1645) and the Roman Catholic threat had subsided as much as it ever would in Owen’s lifetime. During the Restoration era (1660-1688), when the Queen Mother was followed back into England by so many Papists seeking to retake England for the pope (e.g., John Vincent Cane), Owen became re-entrenched against any toleration for Catholics.
47. Owen, Works, VIII: 63.
48. Ibid., VIII: 64.
49. Ibid., VIII: 65.
50. It is possible that Owen wrote this because he was concerned that he would not be able to conform to the Presbyterian form of government, which he certainly thought would be settled in the English Church. He wrote these words in April of the same year that he openly embraced Congregationalism (1646), yet at the time of writing he still seemed to regard himself as favoring the “presbyterial government in churches” (Works, VIII: 47).