John Owen website

Reformation 21 has a post pointing to a website devoted to John Owen. I'm trying to get in more reading on works by Puritan theologians like Owen, Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Watson.

While most adhere to orthodox Reformed viewpoints, there's no way to generalize about their writing (except to call it universally good.) Watson's "The Art of Divine Contentment" is a lot easier to read than Edwards' "Religious Affections." Part of that is simply that Edwards is looking at something more deep than Watson is, but there is also a great difference in writing styles.

One thing that always amazes me is to read books like "Charity And Its Fruits" and to realize that the chapters are actually sermons given by the authors. "Charity And Its Fruits" was originally a 16 part sermon series on 1 Corinthians 13 (the "love chapter".) "The Art of Divine Contentment" was based on 1 verse of the Bible (Philippians 4:11.)

Equally amazing is the amount of theology the writers/preachers expected their parishioners to have. How many of us in church today know the difference between mediate and immediate revelations?

p.s.

One nice benefit of reading "Dead Theologians" is that you can get a lot of their material for free from places like the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.