Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/632

OWE parliament, and, strange to tell, actually took his seat, and was also a member of committee on some religious questions. He was also one of the famous "tryers" who purged so many parishes of useless incumbents, and in this capacity he befriended Pocock, professor of Arabic. Against Biddle and the Socinians were his energy and erudition next directed in his "Vindiciæ Evangelicæ," and thorough is his rapid and powerful demolition. Then followed the "Mortification of sin in Believers," an experimental treatise, searching and powerful, and no mere pastime of idle casuistry. Owen began at length to suspect the ambition of Cromwell, and along with some officers drew up the petition which, it is said, scared him from taking the crown. The deed was not forgotten, for at the inauguration of the lord protector Manton officiated, and Owen was not even invited to the stately ceremony. When Cromwell resigned the chancellorship of the university, and his son Richard succeeded him, Owen was at once superseded as vice-chancellor, and his deanery was afterwards taken from him. His valedictory address is not unworthy of Samuel saying farewell to the school of the prophets. Six of his Latin orations as vice-chancellor are still preserved, and his rule had been eminently successful. A spirit of benign toleration guided his conduct towards his ecclesiastical opponents; nor had he been above attention to his official costume on high days in the university, so that some of his enemies taunted him with academic dandyism. His first work after his retirement was in connection with the Savoy confession; and as if theology and piety should never be divorced, he published in 1657 on "Communion with God," &c. Much of the book is the record of his own soul's intercourse with its Saviour-God. Owen, whose pen was never idle, next published "On the Divine Original, Authority, Self-evidencing light and power of the Scriptures," &c., a work which is still consulted with profit. During his sojourn on his own estate at Stadham he published also his "Theologoumena; or, on the nature, rise, progress, and study of true theology," a work of varied erudition, showing his equal familiarity with classical as with rabbinical literature. In the meantime came out Walton's Polyglot; the mind of the divine recoiled at the idea of so many various readings, and he published a foolish diatribe on the subject, denying what his own eyes and a little research might have assured him of—in short, exposing himself deservedly to the sneers and the castigation of the learned editor. His theory as to the purity of the text of scripture, was wholly at variance with palpable facts which now excite no alarm, while they create learned collation and settlement. After the restoration of Charles Owen retired to Stadham, his native place. In spite of legal prohibition he still continued to preach, and he published "Animadversions" on that insidious volume, Fiat Lux. The first congregational church in Boston invited him across the Atlantic, but though troubles were multiplying around him he refused. His works on "Indwelling Sin," and on the 130th Psalm, practical and devout, were followed by his magnum opus, his "Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews." This work, with the preliminary exercitations, is like gold in its native matrix of quartz, learned and ponderous, yet sagacious in its analysis, though prolix in its illustration; keen in its exposure of Socinian and popish error, but marred in its unity by numerous polemical digressions. Owen exerted himself in favour of many of the oppressed nonconformists, particularly Bunyan. During the declaration of indulgence issued by Charles, Owen preached in London to a regular congregation, and published some antisocinian treatises, and a "Discourse on the Holy Spirit." But his career was drawing to its close, and various painful diseases warned him of coming dissolution. By the aid of friends assisting him as copyists and correctors, he published "On Justification" in 1677; the "Christologia" and other works followed. After visiting various spots for health, he retired to the village of Ealing; and some of his enemies attempted to involve him in the Rye-house plot. He died after severe suffering on the 24th of August, 1683, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, not less than sixty noblemen attending his funeral.

Dr. Owen was a man of great erudition and profound piety. His mind wrought heavily and calmly, but with certain symmetrical results. He wanted, indeed, the spiritual subtlety and nervous energy of Baxter, and the serene and elevated grandeur of Howe. But he excelled in systematic development, saw and surveyed truth on all its sides; and like a skilful architect he carefully drew his plans, patiently collected and tested his materials, and examined well and leisurely his foundations, before he reared his building. His reasonings are sometimes prefix and dull, and his paragraphs involved and confused, though sometimes he warms into beauty of sentiment and style. His theology is compact and massive, though not on all points self-consistent and exhaustive. His opinions on church government are as nearly allied to presbytery as to independency. His influence on his age was great, for he was a prominent actor as well as an untiring author, and he was characterized by integrity and by a love of usefulness which his polemical tendencies in no way checked. When in his maturity, Dr. Owen was tall and majestic in appearance, though he stooped much in later years. He was twice married, and from a large fortune brought him by his second wife, as well as from a legacy left him by a cousin, his latter days were spent in affluence, and he rode in his own carriage. His children appear to have all predeceased him. The latest and best edition of his works was published at Edinburgh, 1856, and succeeding years.—(Life by Dr. Thomson prefixed to the first volume; also Life by Orme.)—J. E.  * OWEN,, F.R.S., superintendent of the natural history departments in the British Museum, was born at Lancaster in the year 1804. He was originally intended for the naval service, and served for a short time as a midshipman on board H.M.S. Tribune. At the close of the American war he quitted the navy, and entered the medical profession with the intention of ultimately again serving at sea in the capacity of a surgeon. He became the pupil of Mr. Baxendale, at that time surgeon to the Lancaster county gaol, and the leading practitioner in the town. On the retirement of Mr. Baxendale, Owen went to Edinburgh, where he matriculated in 1824. He attended the regular courses in the university, and also the extra-academical lectures of Dr. Barclay, who had the merit of having fostered in his pupil's mind that love for comparative anatomy which was ultimately to bear such magnificent fruit, and to place the name of Owen far in advance of those of contemporary cultivators of the science. From Edinburgh he came to St. Bartholomew's hospital in 1825, and became a member of the College of Surgeons in 1826. He soon attracted the notice of Abernethy, who made him one of the dissectors for the anatomical class. It was through Mr. Abernethy's intervention that Owen abandoned his long-cherished project of again going to sea, and that an appointment to assist Mr. Clift in the curatorship of the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons was obtained for him and accepted. For nearly thirty years Owen's history is intimately connected with that of the Hunterian museum. On the death of Mr. Clift he was appointed curator; he also filled the office of Hunterian professor in the college. On entering on his office of assistant curator he found that the specimens of comparative anatomy in the museum were undescribed, except that Hunter had left some general remarks on the subject or physiological principle which was to be illustrated by the different series. Owen's task was, therefore, to discover the species of animals to which the different specimens belonged; and to this end he set about the enormous labour of comparing the Hunterian preparations with recent dissections, the materials for which he for the most part obtained from the Zoological Society. The extraordinary amount of anatomical labour thus undertaken and accomplished, whilst it furnishes the clue to Owen's remarkable fertility as a scientific writer, bore its intended fruit in the five volumes of the "Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological series of comparative anatomy" in the Hunterian museum, which appeared between the years 1833 and 1840. This great work had been preceded in the year 1830 by the "Catalogue of the Preparations of Natural History in spirit;" and was followed in 1845 by the "Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Fossil remains of Mammalia and Fishes," and subsequently by two volumes of the "Catalogue of Osteological specimens." These volumes, however, represent but a small part of Owen's labours. In the short space of this memoir it would be impossible to enumerate even the bare titles of all the papers and treatises which have emanated from his pen. We shall content ourselves with referring to those which embody his more celebrated discoveries and generalizations. In 1831 he dissected the Pearly Nautilus, and in the following year he published a memoir on its anatomy. Other papers on the anatomy of the Mollusca appeared in the Transactions of the Zoological Society in the years 1833 and 1836; and in 1844 he communicated to the Royal Society his description of the soft parts of certain Belemnites preserved 