I admit that I have tended to avoid anything by or about John Owen, reckoning that if such worthies as Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones thought “Owen on the whole is difficult to read” and Jim Packer said, “There is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read.”, it might be more than I could cope with.

However, I found Andrew Thomson’s 19th century biography to be a useful and appetite whetting introduction to the mysteries of Owen, though it turned out not to be as helpful in the area of preaching as I had hoped.

There is no doubting the huge influence John Owen has had on the church over the years and his ministry at the time of the 17th century English Civil War was remarkable. Appointed as Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell as he began his opposition to the corrupt King Charles, Owen moved in very influential circles and often preached to the most illustrious congregations.

Thomson gives a very able portrait of Owen, introducing us to a man of amazing intellectual ability, a prolific writer and student, but also someone who was marked by an evident godliness and spiritual winsomeness.

It would probably not have been difficult to have been struck by Owen’s scholarly and academic prowess on hearing him preach, but that was not the lasting impression made on many. Thomson recalls an occasion when Owen preached in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh and “is listened to at first with wonder and jealousy, which gradually melt into kindlier feelings, as the multitude trace in his words a sweet savour of Christ.”

But what of Owen the preacher? To my disappointment, just two of the book’s 186 pages focus specifically on Owen the Preacher. Thomson admits that the common perception of Owen is that while a great “sermon maker……his involved sentences, though easily overlooked in a composition read in secret, must, without the accompaniments of a most perfect delivery, have been fatal to their effect upon a public audience.” However he quotes contemporaries of Owen who speak of the “admirable facility with which he could discourse on any subject….never at loss for language, and better expressing himself extempore than others with premeditation” and “so great an ornament to the pulpit, that, for matter, manner and efficacy on the hearers, he represented indeed a ambassador of the Most High, a teacher of the oracles of God.”

There is a considerable amount in this book which speaks of Owen’ prodigious output in terms of expositional writings but too little about his preaching ministry which I found frustrating. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile introduction to this ‘Prince of the Puritans’ and I would commend it to you, especially if Owen remains an elusive mystery to you.