to which the old evangel summons its hearers. 'l believe - help thou mine unbelief': this must become their cry.

And the old gospel is proclaimed in the sure confidence that the Christ of whom it testified, the Christ who is the real speaker when the Scriptural invitations to trust him are expounded and applied, is not passively waiting for man's decision as the word goes forth, but is omnipotently active, working with and though the word to bring his people to faith in himself. The preaching of the new gospel is often described as the task of 'bringing men to Christ' - as if only men move, while Christ stands still. But the task of preaching the old gospel could more properly be described as bringing Christ to men, for those who preach it know that as they do their work of setting Christ before men's eyes, the mighty Savior whom they proclaim is busy doing his work through their words, visiting sinners with salvation, awakening them to faith, drawing them in mercy to himself.

It is the older gospel which Owen will teach us to preach: the gospel of the sovereign grace of God in Christ as the Author and Finisher of faith and salvation. It is the only gospel which can be preached on Owen's principles, but those who have tasted its sweetness will not in any case be found looking for another. In the matter of believing and preaching the gospel, as in other things, Jeremiah's words still have their application: 'Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.'19 To find ourselves debarred, as Owen would debar us, from taking up with the fashionable modern substitute gospel may not, after all, be a bad thing, either for us or for the church.

More might be said, but to go further would be to exceed the limits of an introduction. The foregoing remarks are made simply to show how important it is at the present time that we should attend most carefully to Owen's analysis of what the Bible says about the saving work of Christ.

It only remains to add a few remarks about this treatise itself. It was Owen's second major work, and his first masterpiece. (Its predecessor, A Display of Arminianism, published in 1642, when Owen was twenty-six, was a competent piece of prentice-work, rather of the nature of a research thesis.)

The Death of Death is a solid book, made up of detailed exposition and close argument, and requires hard study, as Owen fully realized; a cursory glance will not yield much. ('Reader . . . If thou are, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theater, to go out again - thou has had thy entertainment; farewell!'20) Owen felt, however, that he had a right to ask for hard study, for his book was a product of hard work ('a more than seven-years' serious inquiry . . . into the mind of God about these things, with a serious perusal of all which I could attain that the wit of man, in former or latter days, hath published in opposition to the truth'21), and he was sure in his own mind that a certain finality attached to what he had written. ('Altogether hopeless of success I am not; but fully resolved that I shall not live to see a solid answer given unto it.'22) Time has justified his optimism.23

Something should be said about his opponents. He is writing against three variations on the theme of universal redemption: that of classical Arminianism, noted earlier; that of the theological faculty at Saumur (the position known as Amyraldism, after its leader exponent); and that of Thomas More, a lay theologian of East Anglia. The second of these views originated with a Scots professor at Saumur, John Cameron; it was taken up and developed by two of his pupils, Amyraut (Amyraldus) and Testard, and became the occasion of a prolonged controversy in which Amyraut, Daillé and Blondel were opposed by Rivet, Spanheim and Des Marets (Maresius). The Saumur position won some support among Reformed divines in Britain, being held in modified form by (among others) Bishops Usher and Davenant, and Richard Baxter. None of these, however, had advocated it in print at the time when Owen wrote.24

Goold's summary of the Saumur position may be quoted. "Admitting that, by the purpose of God, and through the death of Christ, the elect are infallibly secured in the enjoyment of salvation, they contended for an antecedent decree, by which God is free to give salvation to all men through Christ, on the condition that they believe on him. Hence their system was termed hypothetic(a1) universalism. The vital difference between it and the strict Arminian theory lies in the absolute security asserted in the former for the spiritual recovery of the elect. They agree, however, in attributing some kind of universality to the atonement, and in maintaining that, on certain condition, within the reach of fulfillment by all men . . . all men have access to the benefits of Christ's death."

From this, Goold continues: "the readers of Owen will understand . . . why he dwells with peculiar keenness and reiteration of statement upon a refutation of the conditional system. . . . It was plausible; it had many learned men for its advocates; it had obtained currency in the foreign churches; and it seems to have been embraced by More."25

More is described by Thomas Edwards as 'a great Sectary, that did much hurt in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire; who was famous also in Boston, [King's] Lynn, and even in Holland, and was followed from place to place by many.'26 Baxter's description is kinder: 'a Weaver of Wisbitch and Lyn, of excellent Parts.'27 (More's doctrine of redemption, of course, was substantially Baxter's own.) Owen, however, has a poor view of his abilities, and makes no secret of the fact. More's book, The Universality of God's Free Grace in Christ to Mankind, appeared in 1646 (not, as Goold says, 1643), and must have exercised a considerable influence, for within three years it had evoked four weighty works which were in whole or part polemics against it:

A Refutation . . . of Thomas More, by Thomas Whitfield, 1646; Vindiciae Redemptionis, by John Stalham, 1647; The Universalist Examined and Convicted, by Obadiah Howe, 1648, and Owen's own book, published in the same year.

More's exposition seems to be of little intrinsic importance; Owen, however, selects it as the fullest statement of the case for universal redemption that had yet appeared in English and uses it unmercifully as a chopping-block. The modern reader, however, will probably find it convenient to skip the sections devoted to refuting More (I:viii, the closing pages of I:iii and IV:vi) on his first passage through Owen's treatise.

Finally, a word about the style of this work. There is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read. This is not so much due to obscure arrangement as to two other factors. The first is his lumbering literary gait. 'Owen travels through it [his subject] with the elephant's grace and solid step, if sometimes also with his ungainly motion,' says Thomson.28 That puts it kindly. Much of Owen's prose reads like a roughly-dashed-off translation of a piece of thinking done in Ciceronian Latin. It has, no doubt, a certain clumsy dignity; so has Stonehenge; but it is trying to the reader to have to go over sentences two or three times to see their meaning, and this necessity makes it much harder to follow an argument. The present writer, however, has found that the hard places in Owen usually come out as soon as one reads them aloud. The second obscuring factor is Owen's austerity as an expositor. He has a lordly disdain for broad introductions which ease the mind gently into a subject, and for comprehensive summaries which gather up scattered points into a small space. He obviously carries the whole of his design in his head, and expects his readers to do the same. Nor are his chapter divisions reliable pointers to the structure of his discourse, for though a change of subject is usually marked by a chapter division, Owen often starts a new chapter where there is no break in the thought at all. Nor is he concerned about literary proportions; the space given to a topic is determined by it intrinsic complexity rather than its relative importance, and the reader is left to work out what is basic and what is secondary by noting how things link together. Anyone who seriously tackles The Death of Death will probably find it helpful to use a pencil and paper in his study of the book and jot down the progress of the exposition.

We would conclude by repeating that the reward to he reaped from studying Owen is worth all the labor involved, and by making the following observations for the student's guidance. (l) It is important to start with the epistle 'To the Reader', for there Owen indicates in short compass what he is trying to do, and why. (2) It is important to read the treatise as a whole, in the order in which it stands, and not to jump into Parts III and IV before mastering the contents of Parts I and II, where the biblical foundations of Owen's whole position are laid. (3) It is hardly possible to grasp the strength and cogency of this massive statement on a first reading. The work must be read and reread to be appreciated.

J. I. Packer

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Notes

1 John Owen, Works, X:6. 2 Jon 2:9. 3 Plus any others who, though they had not heard the gospel, lived up to the light they had - though this point need not concern us here. 4 Westminster Confession, X:1. 5 Granted, it was Charles Wesley who wrote this, but it is one of the many passages in his hymns which make one ask, with 'Rabbi' Duncan, 'Where's your Arminianism now, friend' 6 Gal 6:14. 7 C.H. Spurgeon was thus abundantly right when he declared: "I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel . . . unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the Cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called." (C.H. Spurgeon, The Early Years, Autobiography, vol I, Banner of Truth: London, 1962), p 172). 8 Owen, Works, X:l59. 9 Ibid. 10 Eph 2:9. 11 'Life of John Owen' in Owen, Works, I:38. 12 Compare this, from C.H. Spurgeon: "We are often told that we limit the atonement of Christ, because we say that Christ has not made a satisfaction for all men, or all men would be saved. Now, our reply to this is, that, on the other hand, our opponents limit it: we do not. The Arminians say, Christ died for all men. Ask them what they mean by it. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say, 'No, certainly not.' We ask them the next question - Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any man in particular? They answer 'No.' They are obliged to admit this, if they are consistent. They say 'No. Christ has died that any man may be saved if' - and then follow certain conditions of salvation. Now, who is it that limits the death of Christ? Why, you. You say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon, when you say we limit Christ's death; we say, 'No, my dear sir it is you that do it.' We say Christ so died that he infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number, who through Christ's death not only may be saved, but are saved, must be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it." 13 See Owen, Works, X:311-316, 404-410. 14 'What, I pray, is according to Scripture, for a man to he assured that Christ died for him in particular? Is it not the very highest improvement of faith? doth it not include a sense of the spiritual love of God shed abroad in our hearts? Is it not the top of the apostle's consolation, Rom. viii. 34, and the bottom of all his joyful assurance, Gal. ii. 20?' (Ibid, X:409.)

15 Ibid, X:315. 16 Ibid, X:407f. 17 Loc cit. 18 Ibid, I:422. 19 Jer 6:16. 20 Opening words, 'To the Reader', Owen, Works, X:149. 21 Loc cit. 22 Ibid, X:156. 23 Owen indicates more than once that for a complete statement of the case against universal redemption he would need to write a further book, dealing with 'the other part of the controversy, concerning the cause of sending Christ' (pp 245, 295). Its main thesis, apparently, would have been that 'the fountain and cause of God's sending Christ, is his eternal love to his elect, and to them alone' (p 131), and it would have contained a more large explication of God's purpose of election and reprobation, showing how the death of Christ was a means set apart and appointed for the saving of his elect, and not at all undergone or suffered for those which, in his eternal counsel, he did determine should perish for their sins' (p 245). It looks, therefore, as if it would have included the 'clearing of our doctrine of reprobation, and of the administration of God's providence towards the reprobates, and over all their actions', which Owen promised in the epistle prefixed to A Display of Arminianism (Works, X:9), but never wrote. However, we can understand his concluding that it was really needless to slaughter the same adversary twice. 24 Davenant's Duae Dissertationes, one of which defends universal redemption on Amyraldean lines, came out posthumously in 1650. Owen was not impressed and wrote of it: 'I undertake to demonstrate that the main foundation of the whole dissertation about the death of Christ, with many inferences from thence, are neither formed in nor founded on the word; but that the several parts therein are mutually conflicting and destructive of each other' (Works, X:433, 1650). Baxter wrote a formal disputation defending universal redemption but never printed it; it was published after his death, however, in 1694. 25 'Prefatory Note' in Works, X:140. 26 Gangraena (1646), II:86. 27 Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i:50. 28 Loc cit.