03.The depresbyterianized Owen

The depresbyterianized Owen later re-embraced Presbyterianism Dr. Owen, 1616-83, was quite the greatest alleged Congregationalist and certainly one of the most thorough Theologians Britain has ever produced. Educated at Oxford, he first pastored a Presbyterian Church - in 1643, the year the Westminster Assembly itself was convened. After reading a book by the American John Cotton, Owen inwardly embraced Congregationalism. In his next parish, he seceded from Presbyterianism. That latter was the system many in the Puritan Parliament and most at the presbyterianizing Westminster Assembly were then trying to promote in the wake of The Solemn League and Covenant - for Reformation and Defence of Religion; the Honour and Happiness of the King; and the Peace and Safety of the three Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland - taken and subscribed several times by King Charles and by all ranks in the said three kingdoms. At the termination of the Monarchy and the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1649, Cromwell the Congregationalist appointed Owen Vice-Chancellor at Oxford. He became the chief architect of the Cromwellian State Church, and helped compose the congregationalistic Savoy Declaration of Faith in 1658 (intended to replace the presbyterial Westminster Confession of Faith and its chapter 31:1-5). Subsequent to the termination of the Commonwealth and the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Owen was ejected from

Oxford.

After congregationalistically pastoring a ’gathered church’ in his own home and elsewhere for the next two decades  at the end of his life he certainly moved back toward and seems actually to have re-embraced Presbyterianism. How could it be otherwise - with Owen constantly improving his own infant baptism, in the Name of the Triune God (Who is Himself a Presbytery)? See Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. & A. 167! Thus the proto- Presbyterian Rev. Dr. John Owen - after a lapse into Congregationalism - thereafter increasingly re-presbyterianized.