And again, the idiosyncrasies of individuals must be taken into account, since they always powerfully contribute to produce varieties of spiritual life. John Milton and John Owen were both Christians, both devout, both unceremonial, both advocating a wide liberty of conscience, both averse to Prelacy, and to all Presbyterian domination, both entertaining in general the same views of government, political and ecclesiastical; yet how unlike in many other respects! The one exhibiting in his religion the genius of a poet, the other the genius of a systematic theologian; the one soaring with outstretched wings into the loftiest regions of Divine contemplation, the other measuring every opinion by the standard of a remorseless logic, based upon Scripture; the one inspired with classic taste, chiselling the products of his intellect into forms of beauty, comparable to those of Phidias in the art of sculpture; the other careless respecting artistic style, and flinging out the treasures of his affluent mind after a fashion which is most excruciating to the æsthetical of this generation; the one a man of imagination, the other a man of reason; the one a Homer, the other an Aristotle amongst Puritans. And as they differed in their manner of thinking, so also they differed in their modes of feeling and in their habits of life; the religious sentiments of Milton being calm and pure, with something in their tone almost approaching to angelic elevation, bearing scarcely any marks of such struggles as beset most other Christians, and suggesting the idea that his chief conflicts of soul must have been with "spiritual wickedness in high places;" Owen, on the other hand, dwelling much upon "the mortification of sin in believers," "the doctrine of justification," "the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer," and "the Glory of Christ," and ever indicating the strongest faith and the intensest feeling upon those evangelical points respecting which some defect may be traced in the religion of Milton; and whilst Milton was solitary in his devotion, at least during the latter part of his life, and in this respect, as in others, was "like a star and dwelt apart," Owen delighted in social worship.