Ib. p. 69.
After this I waited on him (Dr. John Owen) at London again, and he
came once to me to my lodgings, when I was in town near him. And he
told me that he received my chiding letter and perceived that I
suspected his reality in the business; but he was so hearty in it that
I should see that he really meant as he spoke, concluding in these
words, "You shall see it, and my practice shall reproach your
diffidence" * * *. About a month after I went to him again, and he had
done nothing, but was still hearty for the work. And to be short, I
thus waited on him time after time, till my papers had been near a
year and a quarter in his hand, and then I advised him to return them
to me, which he did, with these words, "I am still a well-wisher to
those mathematics;"--without any other words about them, or ever
giving me any more exception against them. And this was the issue of
my third attempt for union with the Independents.
Dr. Owen was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to
have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure
explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that
Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the
Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics,
true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted from the
subject matter. Still there appears a very chilling want of
open-heartedness on the part of Owen, produced perhaps by the somewhat
overly and certainly most ungracious resentments of Baxter.
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