ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasises the distinction between two different types of religion in the areas of church polity, worship, and doctrine. It explains how John Owen's own response to these obligations can be seen in microcosm in the programme of godly reform that he sought to implement in Cromwellian Oxford. Owen believed that the appropriate response to the providentially significant events of the mid-seventeenth-century crisis began by understanding the times in order to serve God. Owen argued that those who understood the nature of God's work among them would appreciate that such holiness entailed reformation and separation. He explained that part of the separation enjoined upon them was 'in way of worship and ordinances of fellowship' and in the short section twice referenced the call to come out of Babylon. Owen's preaching in Oxford utilised the same strategies, drawing an absolute distinction between what he believed to represent two types of religious thinking and practice, admitting of no middle ground.
