Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
Samuel Rutherford was born in 1600 in the village and parish of Nisbet, Roxburghshire, in the Borders of Scotland. This was four miles from the town of Jedburgh where Samuel attended school. He was one of three sons. His father was a prosperous farmer and so was able to provide a good education for them all. When Samuel’s academic abilities became obvious his parents decided to make the financial sacrifice necessary to enable him to have a university education. In 1617 he began studies at the University of Edinburgh, being awarded an MA in 1621.
Details of his early spiritual stirrings are not clear. Towards the end of his life Rutherford expressed regret that his younger days had been spent in idleness. “Like a fool, as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before ever I took the gate by the end.” There was however one incident of note which Rutherford himself tells of. When five or six years of age he fell into the village well. His friends ran quickly to the nearest house for help. When the rescuers arrived they found him, sitting on the grass and soaked to the skin, but safe. His explanation? “A bonnie white man came and drew me out of the well.” Our minds turn to Scripture and to those beings who appear “in white apparel” – the “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Heb. 1:14). Doubtless this incident left a deep impression upon the young boy, speaking to him as it did of the providence of God and the power of God, the protection of God.
It was probably not until he was twenty-four years of age that Rutherford was converted and could write to one of his correspondents: “He hath fettered me with his love...and left me a chained man.” He explained what had happened thus: “Oh, but Christ hath a saving eye! Salvation is in His eyelids! When He first looked on me, I was saved; it cost Him but a look to make hell quit of me!”
Two years after graduation from Edinburgh Rutherford was appointed professor of Latin language and literature in the University. In 1626 he resigned his office to begin studying theology, having become “seriously religious.”
Rutherford’s life following his ordination to the ministry may be divided into four periods:
1. The Preacher – Anwoth (1627-1636)
Following two years of theological studies Rutherford responded to an invitation from Sir John Gordon (later to become Lord Kenmure) of Cardoness Castle near Anwoth in Kirkcudbrightshire to come to the parish. Anwoth had just been disjoined from a neighbouring parish and so Rutherford was its first minister. It is now a famous and a fragrant place for Christians because of this ministry. What was it like?
It was prodigious. A contemporary of Rutherford’s, the Rev. James Urquhart, minister of Kinloss (Morayshire) recorded of Rutherford’s labours: “He seemed to be always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing or studying.” We remember that Anwoth was a rural parish: many hours were required simply to visit his flock, scattered in small hamlets in lowland and upland. It is said that he often rose at three in the morning for worship, prayer and communion with Christ.
It was passionate. The same James Urquhart also recorded: “Many times I thought he would have flown out of the pulpit when he came to speak of Jesus Christ. He was never in his right elements but when he was commending Him. He would have fallen asleep in bed speaking of Christ.” Rutherford was a moving and affectionate preacher. The language of his sermons and other writings is exotic, exalted, and burning with love to Christ and zeal for Christ. The imagery has been described as “Oriental luxuriance” and its themes as ‘heavenly’, even ‘seraphic’ or ‘angelic’. The poetical literature of the Bible, especially the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, were favourite portions of Rutherford.
It was patient. At first his work did not seem successful and there were many trials and discouragements. He had married recently. Both his children died in infancy and then in 1629 his wife was taken ill with a lingering disease which led to her death a year later. But his great burden was for souls and he wrote: “If the Lord furnish not new timber from Lebanon to build the house, the work will cease.” He said that he would “be glad to know of one soul to be my crown and rejoicing in the day of Christ.” In time the Spirit of God drew many to attend upon his heart-warming ministry. Communion seasons especially drew many.
It was pastoral. It was providences and experiences such as these that fitted Rutherford to excel as a kind, sympathetic and faithful pastor to the people of God, firstly in Anwoth, then to a wide circle of correspondents and finally to the whole church through what he left in his writings. His second wife would predecease him, and of the seven children she bore to him only one would outlast Rutherford himself. Two of his children would die while he was in London and news from home was intermittent. Rutherford himself learned the art of Christian contentment, by taking his burdens to the One who is spoken of as a “man of sorrows,” one who is “acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). Rutherford’s dependency upon God is seen when he writes, “My faith hath no bed to sleep on but omnipotency.”
Rutherford was no starry-eyed dreamer but a God-sent preacher, holding fast the faithful word, speaking the things which become sound doctrine. It was his writings in defence of Calvinism which led to his expulsion from Anwoth. In 1634 Thomas Sydserff became Bishop of Galloway. Sydserff was an arrogant man and a sycophantic follower of Archbishop William Laud, the right-hand man of King Charles I. In 1636 Rutherford published a Treatise against Arminianism, which exposed the doctrinal errors of Laud. Rutherford had already proved his own mettle by rejecting the Five Articles of Perth (1618), an attempt by James VI to coerce the Scottish Church to embrace the practices of kneeling at the Lord’s Supper, private communion in cases of ‘necessity’, private baptism in similar cases, observance of ‘Christian’ festivals, and confirmation by Episcopal bishops. These Rutherford termed as “dumb masks of anti-Christian ceremonies.”
An ecclesiastical court was convened in Wigtown, followed by one in Edinburgh, and Rutherford, not guilty of any offence according to the Scriptures, was deposed from office and banished to Aberdeen.
2. The Prisoner – Aberdeen (1636-1638)
It was a measure of Rutherford that his immediate reaction to his lot was one of quiet resignation, thankfulness and even joy. On the eve of his banishment he wrote to Lady Kenmure, one of his favourite correspondents: “That honour that I have prayed for these 16 years, with submission to my Lord’s will, my kind Lord hath now bestowed upon me, even to suffer for my royal and princely King Jesus, and for His kingly crown, and the freedom of His kingdom that His Father hath given Him.” He testified: “I know Christ shall make Aberdeen my garden of delights.”
His ‘prison’ was No.44, Upper Kirkgate. Rutherford was not impressed with Aberdeen itself or its inhabitants. “It consists of Papists and men of Gallio’s naughty faith” (a reference to Acts 18:17: “And Gallio cared for none of those things” – the things that Paul suffered from the Jews). Under the influence of the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’, the professors of the two universities, King’s and Marischal University, the place was strongly opposed to the Calvinism and Presbyterianism espoused by Rutherford. He says: “I find the townsmen cold, general, and dry in their kindness;” “Many think me a strange man, and my cause not good.”
Things were not encouraging. Worst of all were his “dumb Sabbaths,” for Rutherford was forbidden to preach. The devil suggested to him that God had cast him off, that he was a spiritual failure. Yet the twenty-two months of banishment in Aberdeen were to prove a blessing to himself and at length to the wider church. His prison became a palace, Christ’s palace. He enjoyed remarkable manifestations of the love of God in Christ, such that he could write: “Christ and His cross are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain.”
Rutherford’s exile in Aberdeen is known as his “letter-writing” period. Most of the 365 collected letters came from this period. In them we see his view of life. A constant theme in the letters written from Aberdeen is that of the emptiness and vanity of this passing world. “Happy are they who have passed their hard and wearisome time of apprenticeship, and are now freemen and citizens in that joyful, high city, the New Jerusalem. He often speaks of his own flesh as “clay” and longs for the world to come. “O my Lord, come over mountains at one stride...Oh, if He would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb’s wife for her Husband!”
As well as conflicts within there were disputes without. Rutherford attended several places of worship and this soon led him into dispute with the ‘Doctors’ on subjects such as Predestination, the Atonement, Free Will, Worship and Justification. He was more than match for them all.
3. The Professor – St Andrews (1638-60)
By 1638 the Scottish nation was in revolt against the episcopacy of Archbishop Laud. The National Covenant was signed throughout the land. The changed conditions enable Rutherford to return briefly to Anwoth. But within a year the General Assembly expressed the wish that Rutherford become Professor of Divinity at St Mary’s College, St Andrews. Reluctantly he agreed, leaving Anwoth for the second time.
St Andrews had a bad reputation. One who studied there under Rutherford described it as “the very nursery of all superstition in worship and error in doctrine and the sink of all profanity in conversation among the students.” But under Rutherford all changed. He gave lectures on Theology and also taught Hebrew and Church History. He held his post in conjunction with a charge in the Town Church. St Andrews was to be his home for the rest of his life. He transformed the College so that it sent forth many men to build the house of the Lord in the land. He was honoured to become Principal of the College when he returned from the Westminster Assembly in 1648.
Many titles emerged from his pen during his professorship and principalship. Sadly they are generally unknown and often not easily obtainable.
4. The Presbyterian – Westminster Assembly (1643-1648)
Rutherford was one of six commissioners from the Church of Scotland who attended the famous Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Despite having a voice but no vote their influence on the proceedings was out of all proportion to their numbers. Shorter Catechism. Rutherford took a prominent part in the debate on Redemption, ably opposing the Amyraldians such as Calamy, Seaman and Vines. He insisted that the love of God revealed in John 3:16 “is restricted to the Church.” He said: “It is an actual saving love, and therefore not a general love.”
Rutherford however was charitable in his estimation of others and was not soured by disputes. “I judge that in England the Lord hath many names and a fair company, that shall stand at the side of Christ, when He shall render up the Kingdom to the Father; and that in that renowned nation there be men of all ranks, wise, valorous, generous...gracious, learned.”
By the time of his death his vision, shared by so many, of a pure, biblical church within a nation covenanted to God, was fading. Charles II, who had once signed the Solemn League and Covenant in 1650, was restored to the throne in 1660 and immediately began to trample upon the work of Reformation. Rutherford was a marked man, particularly for his book Lex Rex, which opposed the absolute powers being assumed by the monarchy. He was deprived of all offices and summoned to appear before the King. The King’s emissaries eventually came for Rutherford, who was by now a sick man. “Tell them,” he said, “that I have a summons already from a superior Judge and judicatory and I behove to answer my first summons. Ere your day arrives I shall be where few kings and great men come.” His tent was being taken down. When the time eventually came he declared; “This night will close the door and fasten my anchor within the veil. I shall go away in a sleep by five in the morning.” His last recorded words so sum up the theme of his life. “Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s Land.”
It was a measure of Rutherford that his immediate reaction to his lot was one of quiet resignation, thankfulness and even joy. On the eve of his banishment he wrote to Lady Kenmure, one of his favourite correspondents: “That honour that I have prayed for these 16 years, with submission to my Lord’s will, my kind Lord hath now bestowed upon me, even to suffer for my royal and princely King Jesus, and for His kingly crown, and the freedom of His kingdom that His Father hath given Him.” He testified: “I know Christ shall make Aberdeen my garden of delights.”
His ‘prison’ was No.44, Upper Kirkgate. Rutherford was not impressed with Aberdeen itself or its inhabitants. “It consists of Papists and men of Gallio’s naughty faith” (a reference to Acts 18:17: “And Gallio cared for none of those things” – the things that Paul suffered from the Jews). Under the influence of the ‘Aberdeen Doctors’, the professors of the two universities, King’s and Marischal University, the place was strongly opposed to the Calvinism and Presbyterianism espoused by Rutherford. He says: “I find the townsmen cold, general, and dry in their kindness;” “Many think me a strange man, and my cause not good.”
Things were not encouraging. Worst of all were his “dumb Sabbaths,” for Rutherford was forbidden to preach. The devil suggested to him that God had cast him off, that he was a spiritual failure. Yet the twenty-two months of banishment in Aberdeen were to prove a blessing to himself and at length to the wider church. His prison became a palace, Christ’s palace. He enjoyed remarkable manifestations of the love of God in Christ, such that he could write: “Christ and His cross are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain.”
Rutherford’s exile in Aberdeen is known as his “letter-writing” period. Most of the 365 collected letters came from this period. In them we see his view of life. A constant theme in the letters written from Aberdeen is that of the emptiness and vanity of this passing world. “Happy are they who have passed their hard and wearisome time of apprenticeship, and are now freemen and citizens in that joyful, high city, the New Jerusalem. He often speaks of his own flesh as “clay” and longs for the world to come. “O my Lord, come over mountains at one stride...Oh, if He would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb’s wife for her Husband!”
As well as conflicts within there were disputes without. Rutherford attended several places of worship and this soon led him into dispute with the ‘Doctors’ on subjects such as Predestination, the Atonement, Free Will, Worship and Justification. He was more than match for them all.
3. The Professor – St Andrews (1638-60)
By 1638 the Scottish nation was in revolt against the episcopacy of Archbishop Laud. The National Covenant was signed throughout the land. The changed conditions enable Rutherford to return briefly to Anwoth. But within a year the General Assembly expressed the wish that Rutherford become Professor of Divinity at St Mary’s College, St Andrews. Reluctantly he agreed, leaving Anwoth for the second time.
St Andrews had a bad reputation. One who studied there under Rutherford described it as “the very nursery of all superstition in worship and error in doctrine and the sink of all profanity in conversation among the students.” But under Rutherford all changed. He gave lectures on Theology and also taught Hebrew and Church History. He held his post in conjunction with a charge in the Town Church. St Andrews was to be his home for the rest of his life. He transformed the College so that it sent forth many men to build the house of the Lord in the land. He was honoured to become Principal of the College when he returned from the Westminster Assembly in 1648.
Many titles emerged from his pen during his professorship and principalship. Sadly they are generally unknown and often not easily obtainable.
4. The Presbyterian – Westminster Assembly (1643-1648)
Rutherford was one of six commissioners from the Church of Scotland who attended the famous Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Despite having a voice but no vote their influence on the proceedings was out of all proportion to their numbers. Shorter Catechism. Rutherford took a prominent part in the debate on Redemption, ably opposing the Amyraldians such as Calamy, Seaman and Vines. He insisted that the love of God revealed in John 3:16 “is restricted to the Church.” He said: “It is an actual saving love, and therefore not a general love.”
Rutherford however was charitable in his estimation of others and was not soured by disputes. “I judge that in England the Lord hath many names and a fair company, that shall stand at the side of Christ, when He shall render up the Kingdom to the Father; and that in that renowned nation there be men of all ranks, wise, valorous, generous...gracious, learned.”
By the time of his death his vision, shared by so many, of a pure, biblical church within a nation covenanted to God, was fading. Charles II, who had once signed the Solemn League and Covenant in 1650, was restored to the throne in 1660 and immediately began to trample upon the work of Reformation. Rutherford was a marked man, particularly for his book Lex Rex, which opposed the absolute powers being assumed by the monarchy. He was deprived of all offices and summoned to appear before the King. The King’s emissaries eventually came for Rutherford, who was by now a sick man. “Tell them,” he said, “that I have a summons already from a superior Judge and judicatory and I behove to answer my first summons. Ere your day arrives I shall be where few kings and great men come.” His tent was being taken down. When the time eventually came he declared; “This night will close the door and fasten my anchor within the veil. I shall go away in a sleep by five in the morning.” His last recorded words so sum up the theme of his life. “Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s Land.”
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A section on the doctrine of the love of God from Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself:
We are hence taught to acknowledge no Love to be in God, which is not effectual in doing Good to the Creature; there is no Lip-love, no raw Well-wishing to the Creature, which God doth not make good. We know but three Sorts of Love that God has to the Creature, all the Three are like the fruitful Womb; there is no Miscarrying, no Barrenness in the Womb of divine Love.
1. He loves all that he has made, so far, as to give them a Being, to conserve them in Being as long as he pleaseth: He had a Desire to have Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, Heaven, Sea, Clouds, Air; he created them out of the Womb of Love, and out of Goodness, and keeps them in Being; he can hate nothing that he made: Now, according to Arminians, he wished a Being to many Things in their Seed and Causes, as he wished the Earth to be more fruitful before the Fall than now it is; so that, against God’s Will, and his Good-will to the Creatures, he comes short of that natural antecedent Love, that he beareth to Creatures: He could have wished Death never to be, nor Sickness, nor old Age, (say Arminians) nor Barrenness of the Earth, nor Corruption. Nay, but though these have Causes, by Rule of Justice, in the Sins of Men, yet we have no Cause to say, God falls short of his Love, and wished and desired such and such a Good to the Creature, but Things miscarried in his Hand; his Love was like a Mother that conceiveth with many Children, but they die in the Womb; so God willed and loved the Being of many Things, but they could not be; the Love of God was like the miscarrying Womb that parts with the dead Child: We cannot acknowledge any such Love in God.
2. There is a second Love and Mercy in God, by which he loves all Men and Angels, yea, even his Enemies; makes the Sun to shine on the unjust Man, as well as the just, and causeth Dew and Rain to fall on the Orchard and Fields of the bloody and deceitful Man, whom the Lord abhors; as Christ teacheth us, Matt. 5.43-48. Nor doth God miscarry in his Love; he desires the eternal Being of damned Angels and Men; he sends the Gospel to many Reprobates, and invites them to Repentance, and, with Longanimity and Forbearance, suffereth Pieces of froward Dust to fill the Measure of their Iniquity; yet does not the Lord’s general Love fall short of what he willeth to them.
3. There is a Love of special Election to Glory; far less can God come short in the End of this Love: For, (1.) The Work of Redemption prospereth in the Hands of Christ, even to the Satisfaction of his Soul; Saving of Sinners, (all Glory to the Lamb) is a thriving Work and successful in Christ’s Hands, Isa. 53.10,11, He shall see of the Travail of his Soul, and be satisfied. (2.) Christ cannot shoot at the Rovers and miss his Mark: I should desire no more, but to be once in Christ’s Chariot paved with Love, Cant. 3. Were I once assured I am within the Circle and Compass of that Love of Election, I should not be afraid that the Chariot can be broken or turned off its Wheels; Christ’s Chariot can go through the Red-Sea, though not dried up: He shoots Arrows of Love, and cannot miss; he rides through Hell and the Grave, and makes the Dead his living Captives and Prisoners. (3.) This Love is natively of itself active; Hezekiah saith in his Song, Isa 38.17, Behold, for Peace I had Bitterness, but thou hast in Love to my Soul (delivered) me from the Pit of Corruption; but in Hebrew it is, Thou hast loved my Soul out of the Pit of Corruption, because thou hast cast all my Sins behind thy Back: He speaketh of God’s Love, as if it were a living Man, with Flesh and Bones, Arms, Hands, and Feet, went down to the Pit, and lifted up Hezekiah’s Soul out of the Pit; so has the Love of Christ loved us out of Hell, or loved Hell away to Hell, and loved Death down to the Grave, and loved Sin away, and loved us out of the Arms of the Devil: Christ’s Love is a pursuing and a conquering Thing. I shall never believe that this Love of Redemption stands so many Hundred Miles aloof on the Shore, and the Bank of the River and Lake of Fire and Brimstone, and cries afar off, and wisheth all Mankind may come to Land & Shore, and casteth to them, being so many hundred Miles from them, Words of Milk, Wine and Honey, out of the Gospel, and crieth that Christ loveth all and every one to Salvation; and if Wishes could make Men happy, Christ earnestly wishes and desires, if all Men were alike well-minded to their own Salvation, that all and every one might be saved, that there were not a Hell, but he will not put the Tip of his little Finger in their Heart to bow and incline their Will; and Christ crieth to the whole World, perishing in Sin, I have shed my Blood for you all, and wish you much Happiness; but if ye will not come to me to believe, I purpose not to pass over the Line of Arminian Decency or Jesuitical Congruity, nor can I come to you to draw your Hearts, by way of efficacious Determination; if ye will do for your selves and your own Salvation, the greatest Part of the Work, which is to apply Redemption, by your own Free-will (though I know you cannot be Masters, of your selves, of one good Thought, and are dead in Sins) as I have done the other lesser Part, purchased Salvation for you, or made you all reconcilable and savable, ‘tis well; otherwise, I love the Salvation of you and every one, but I will not procure it, but leave that to your Free-will; choose Fire or Water, Heaven or Hell, as the Counsels of your own Heart shall lead you; and I have done with you: Oh such a Love as this could never save me! If the young Heir had Wisdom, he should pray that the wise Tutor lay not the Falling or the Standing of the House on his green Head, and raw, glassie, and weather-cock Free-will; we shall cast down our Crowns at the Feet of Him that sitteth on the Throne, because he has redeemed us out of all Nations, Tongues, and Languages, and left these Nations to perish in their own wicked Way: Sure, in Heaven I shall have no Arminian Thoughts, as now I have, through Corruption of Nature; I shall not then divide the Song of free Redemption between the Lamb and Free-will, and give the largest share to Free-will: My Soul, enter not into their Counsels or Secrets, who thus black Christ, and shame that fair, spotless and excellent Grace of God.
