John Owen

Our next task is to take a view of the idol himself, of this great deity of FREE-WILL, whose original being not well known. He is pretended, like the Ephesian image of Diana,¹ to have fallen down from heaven and to have his endowments from above (Act 19:24-35). But yet considering what a nothing he was at his first discovery in comparison of that vast giant-like hugeness to which now he is grown, we may say of him as the painter said of his monstrous picture, which he had mended or rather marred according to every one’s fancy,…“It is the issue² of the people’s brain.” Origen³ is supposed to have brought him first into the church; but among those many sincere worshippers of divine grace, this setter forth of new demons found but little entertainment.

It was looked upon but like the stump of Dagon with his head and hands laid down before the ark of God without whose help he could neither know nor do that which is good in any kind, still accounted but…“a fig-tree log, an unprofitable piece of wood.” The fathers of the succeeding ages had much debate to what use they should put it, and though some exalted it a degree or two above its merits, yet the most concluded to keep it a block still until at length there arose a stout champion,⁴ challenging on his behalf the whole church of God, and like a knight-errant,⁵ wandered from the west to the east to grapple with any that should oppose his idol; who, though he met with divers adversaries, one especially,⁶ who in the behalf of the grace of God continually foiled him and cast him to the ground, and that in the judgment of all the lawful judges assembled in councils and in the opinion of most of the Christian bystanders. Yet by his cunning insinuation,⁷ he planted such an opinion of his idol’s deity and self-sufficiency in the hearts of divers⁸ that to this day it could never be rooted out.

Now after the decease of his Pelagian worshippers, some of the corrupter schoolmen,⁹ seeing him thus from his birth exposed without shelter to wind and weather, to all assaults, out of mere charity and self-love built him a temple and adorned it with natural lights, merits, uncontrolled independent operations, [and] many other gay attendances. But in the beginning of the Reformation—that fatal time for idolatry and superstition together with abbeys and monasteries—the zeal and learning of our forefathers with the help of God’s Word demolished this temple and brake this building down to the ground. In the rubbish whereof we well hoped the idol himself had been so deeply buried as that his head should never more have been exalted to the trouble of the Church of God, until not long since some curious wits, whose weak stomachs were clogged with manna and loathed the sincere milk of the Word, raking all dunghills for novelties, lighted unhappily upon this idol, and presently with no less joy than did the mathematician at the discovery of a new geometrical proportion exclaim, “We have found it! We have found it!” And without more ado, up they erected a shrine, and until this day continue offering of praise and thanks for all the good they do to this work of their own hands.¹⁰

And that the idol may be free from ruin, to which in himself they have found by experience that he is subject, they have matched him to contingency,¹¹ a new goddess of their own creation, who having proved very fruitful in monstrous births upon their conjunctions,¹² they nothing doubt they shall never [lack] one to set on the throne and make president of all human actions. So that after he hath, with various success at least twelve hundred years, contended with the providence and grace of God, he boasteth now as if he had obtained a total victory. But yet all his prevailing is to be attributed to the diligence and varnish of his new abettors¹³ with—to our shame be it spoken!—the negligence of his adversaries. In him and his cause there is no more real worth than was when by the ancient fathers he was exploded and cursed out of the church. So that they who can attain through the many winding labyrinths of curious distinctions to look upon the thing itself, shall find that they have been, like Egyptian novices, brought through many stately frontispieces¹⁴ and goodly fabrics, with much show of zeal and devotion, to the image of an ugly ape.

Yet here observe, that we do not absolutely oppose free-will, as if it were…a mere figment [or as if] there is no such thing in the world, but only in that sense the Pelagians and Arminians¹⁵ do assert it. About words we will not contend. We grant man in the substance of all his actions as much power, liberty, and freedom as a mere created nature is capable of. We grant him to be free in his choice from all outward coaction¹⁶ or inward natural necessity to work according to [choice] and deliberation, spontaneously embracing what seemeth good unto him. Now call this power free-will or what you please, [as long as] you make it not supreme, independent, and boundless, we are not at all troubled. The imposition of names depends upon the discretion of their inventors.

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From “A Display of Arminianism,” in The Works of John Owen, Vol X, reprinted by The Banner of Truth Trust.

John Owen (1616-1683): called “The Prince of the Puritans” and committed to the Congregational way of church government. He was a chaplain in the army of Oliver Cromwell and vice-chancellor of Oxford University, but most of his life he served as a minister in Congregational churches. His written works span forty years and run to twenty-four volumes representing among the best resources for theology in the English language. Born to Puritan parents in the Oxfordshire village of Stadham.

1 Diana – Greek goddess of the moon; her temple at Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
2. issue – the flowing out, therefore, the product.
3. Origen (c. 185-c. 254) – theologian and Biblical scholar of the early Greek Church.
4. Pelagius (c. 354-c. 420) – British monk, who argued for a totally free human will to do good and held that divine grace was bestowed in relation to human merit. His views were condemned as heresy by the Council of Ephesus (431).
5. knight-errant – a wandering knight; a knight who traveled in search of adventures for the purpose of exhibiting military skill, prowess, and generosity.
6. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) – early church theologian born in Tagaste, North Africa. Known by many as the father of orthodox theology; taught the depravity of man and the grace of God in salvation.
7. insinuation – to work one’s self into favor subtly; to introduce gradually and by clever means.
8. divers – several; more than one but not a great number.
9. schoolmen – a term for the teachers of philosophy and theology in the Middle Ages. Also known as scholastics, examples would be Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) and John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308).
10. A reference to the followers of Arminius.
11. contingency – the absence of necessity; something that occurs only as a result of something else.
12. conjunctions – joining together, meaning the union of free-will and contingency.
13. abettors – assistants in a criminal act.
14. frontispiece – the ornamental façade or face of a building.
15. Arminians – followers of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), Dutch theologian, born in Oudewater, The Netherlands. He rejected the Reformers’ understanding of predestination, teaching instead that God’s predestination of individuals was based on His foreknowledge of their accepting or rejecting Christ by their own free-will.
16. coaction – force; urging to action by moral pressure

Courtesy of Chapel Library