Cowan's book reflects on the preaching of the well-known Puritan John Owen (1616–83) before Parliament and in other nationally significant settings. Focusing on thirteen sermons from this context, in the years 1646–59, Cowan seeks to illumine ways in which Owen's engagement of national affairs related to his eschatological beliefs about the prophesied end times. “The central thesis of this book,” Cowan writes, “is that Owen's sermons from this period are best described as a form of ‘prophetic preaching’” (3). Cowan enters into a technical debate in invoking the language of “prophetic preaching.” A functional taxonomy in the history of preaching (drawn from the work of John Wilson) regularly terms “prophetic” those sermons that center on human responsibility and agency over against “apocalyptic” sermons that highlight divine action. Cowan seeks to question this binary by suggesting instead that “the significant apocalyptic material in Owen's sermons is complementary to, and indeed inseparable from, the prophetic material.” Still further, “for Owen, reformation was required precisely because he believed a great divine transformation to be underway” (3; see also 183).

To make his case, Cowan includes chapters on key facets of Owen's civic preaching: identifying and interpreting Providence (chapter 2); the obligation to “improve” these providential mercies (chapter 3); the godly magistrate's response to such Providence (chapter 4); the godly relationship between magistrate and clergy (chapter 5); and, finally, the appropriate pastoral warnings given to a negligent nation (chapter 6). These chapters make sense of why these sermons are significant: they identify and seek to interpret Providence amid the tumult of mid-seventeenth-century English experience. That epistemological analysis is then followed by ethical and political reflections on how one ought to respond appropriately to such providential perception.

Perhaps the analysis of Owen's claim that Christians are obligated to “improve” upon providential mercies is most notable and at the same time easily misperceived. Cowan shows that the language of improvement does not suggest that all providences are themselves good; indeed, even setbacks are to be improved lest their function as a form of divine discipline be missed. Very specific examples of Owen's tenure as vice chancellor of Oxford are sketched in some detail here (81–86). It is noteworthy that Owen lifts the language of “improving” on Providence from more common usage in the context of baptism, where one is to improve one's baptism by making good use of it in a self-conscious, intentional manner. The language serves to affirm that one suffers or passively receives something (whether baptism or Providence), but that one also has agency and responsibility to act therein faithfully.

The book repays reading. A fascinating figure who experienced successes and then failures comes under examination for his preaching rather than his theological treatises, which adds much to the common portrait of Owen. Yet the most significant contribution to scholarship is the challenge to this binary distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic preaching. Cowan shows that Owen maintained a consistent eschatological commitment from 1646 to 1659 (18, 181), saw his later political failures as a confirmation and not a challenge to his eschatology (170, 182), and ranged over both sorts of homiletical conceptuality: using apocalyptic jargon to attest God's action while also prophetically calling for moral and ecclesiastical reform.

Further theological and analytic work might be done to observe how Owen represents an early modern and Reformed iteration of the long-running Augustinian tradition regarding divine and human agency. As Kathryn Tanner and William Placher have both shown in historical analyses of key theologians in the modern era, earlier Augustinians simply do not accept a competitive relationship between divine and human agency. Owen's own works (especially his treatise Pneumatologia) illustrate this approach to Christian theological and moral rhetoric that highlights divine grace and invasive agency in such a way that does not negate but actually enlivens Christian responsibility. That such pairings seem so tension-laden this side of Kantian metaphysics marks one reason that studies such as this one are much needed today.