The Highest Style of Thought and Authorship

Andrew Thomson, the 19th century biographer of John Owen and expert in the Puritans generally, offers his fair share of wisdom vignettes throughout his telling of Owen’s story.  In the following paragraph, he perhaps unknowingly includes Owen in the long line of theologians who desired for themselves a life of literary leisure but found God’s providence to draw them into the ecclesiological, political and cultural issues of their day; and by this providence, much lasting fruit has been born for our profit:

A wish has sometimes been expressed that men who, like Owen, have contributed so largely to the enriching of our theological literature, could have been spared the endless avocations of public life and allowed to devote themselves almost entirely to authorship.  But the wisdom of this sentiment is very questionable.

Experience seems to testify that a certain amount of contact with the business of practical life is necessary to the highest style of thought and authorship; and that minds, when left to undisturbed literary leisure, are apt to degenerate into habits of diseased speculation and sickly fastidiousness.  Most certainly the works that have come from men of monastic habits have done little for the world, compared with the writings of those who have ever been ready to obey the voice which summoned them away from tranquil studies to breast the storms and guide the movements of great social conflicts.  The men who have lived the most earnestly for their own age, have also lived the most usefully for posterity.

Andrew Thomson, John Owen: Prince of Puritans, 77.