John Owen was born in 1616, in a time of civil war and religious strife that deeply divided England. Like many sincere Christians, he came to know doubt and spiritual anguish firsthand before finding, already an adult, a lasting peace in Christ.
The son of a Puritan pastor of Welsh descent, he studied at Queen’s College, Oxford, graduating in 1632 and completing his master’s degree in 1635. In 1637, he left the university, refusing to accept the new religious statutes imposed by Archbishop William Laud.
For years he lived under a deep spiritual burden, uncertain of his salvation. In 1642, overhearing an unknown preacher comment on Matthew 8:26, he finally found assurance of God’s grace, a turning point that would shape all his later theology.
He became chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, accompanying him on the military campaigns in Ireland in 1649 and Scotland in 1650. The day after the execution of King Charles I, in January 1649, he preached before Parliament without condemning the act, a sermon that would be publicly burned not long after his death.
In 1651, he became Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and later vice chancellor of the university. During this period he also had two Quaker women whipped for disturbing public order, an episode remembered as a contradiction against the liberty of conscience he himself would come to defend years later, once he was under persecution.
Family life was marked by grief: of the eleven children he had with his wife Mary Rooke, ten died in childhood, and the only daughter who reached adulthood died of tuberculosis shortly after marrying. It was in this context of mourning that he wrote Communion with God and Of the Mortification of Sin, in 1657 and 1656.
In 1662, the Act of Uniformity removed him from official ministry, along with some two thousand Puritan pastors. Owen went on preaching and writing, and used his influence to help secure the release of the preacher John Bunyan from prison.
In his final years he suffered from asthma and kidney stones, yet did not stop producing his vast theological work, including his extensive commentary on the letter to the Hebrews. He died on August 24, 1683, in Ealing, near London.
Known as the Prince of the Puritans, Owen left behind a theology of grace and of the Holy Spirit that still sustains Reformed preachers and missionaries around the world, reminding us that faith also matures amid loss, personal contradiction, and persecution.
