MUCH HONORED SIR, -- Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. I have been too
long in writing to you. I am confident that ye have learned to prize
Christ, and His love and favor, more than ordinary professors who
scarce see Christ with half an eye, because their sight is taken up
with eyeing and liking the beauty of this over-gilded world, that
promiseth fair to all its lovers, but in the push of a trial, when need
is, can give nothing but a fair beguile.
I know that ye are not ignorant that men come not to this world, as
some do to a market, to see and to be seen; or as some come to behold a
May-game, and only to behold, and to go home again. Ye come hither to
treat with God, and to tryst with Him in His Christ for salvation to
your soul, and to seek reconciliation with an angry, wrathful God, in a
covenant of peace made to you in Christ; and this is more than ordinary
sport, or the play that the greatest part of the world give their heart
unto. And, therefore, worthy Sir, I pray you, by the salvation of your
soul, and by the mercy of God, and your compearance before Christ, do
this in sad earnest, and let not salvation be your by-work or your
holy-day's talk only, or a work by the way. For men think that this may
be done on three days' space on a feather bed, when death and they are
fallen in hands together, and that with a word or two they shall make
their soul-matters right. Alas! This is to sit loose and unsure in the
matters of our salvation. Know and try in time your holding of Him, and
the rights and charters of heaven, and upon what terms ye have Christ
and the Gospel, and what Christ is worth in your estimation, and how
lightly ye esteem of other things, and how dearly of Christ. I am sure,
if you see Him in his beauty and glory, you will see Him to be that
incomparable jewel which you should seek, howbeit you should sell,
wadset and forfeit your few years' portion of this life's joys. Oh
happy soul for evermore, who can rightly compare this life with that
long-lasting life to come, and can balance the weighty glory of the
one, with the light golden vanity of the other! The day of the Lord is
at hand, and all men shall come out in their blacks and whites as they
are; there shall be no borrowed colors in that day. Men now borrow the
lustre of Christianity, but how many counterfeit masks will be burnt in
the day of God, in the fire that shall consume the earth and the works
that are on it! And howbeit Christ have the hardest part of it now,
yet, in the presence of my Lord, whom I serve in the Spirit, I would
not differ or exchange Christ's prison, bonds, and chains, with the
golden chains and lordly rents of the men of this world. Worthy, worthy
for evermore is Christ, for whom the saints of God suffer the short
pains of this life!
Sir, I wish your soul may be more acquainted with the sweetness of
Christ. Grace, grace be with you.
ABERDEEN, 1637
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Rutherford was also known for his spiritual and devotional works, such as Christ Dying and drawing Sinners to Himself and his Letters. Concerning his Letters, Charles Spurgeon wrote: "When we are dead and gone let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's Letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men". Published versions of the Letters contain 365 letters and fit well with reading one per day.
Rutherford was a strong supporter of the divine right of Presbytery, the principle that the Bible calls for Presbyterian church government. Among his polemical works are Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), Lex, Rex (1644), and Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience.
Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian theologian and author. He was one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly.
Born in the village of Nisbet, Roxburghshire, Rutherford was educated at Edinburgh University, where he became in 1623 Regent of Humanity (Professor of Latin). In 1627 he was settled as minister of Anwoth in Galloway, from where he was banished to Aberdeen for nonconformity. His patron in Galloway was John Gordon, 1st Viscount of Kenmure. On the re-establishment of Presbytery in 1638 he was made Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews, and in 1651 Rector of St. Mary's College there. At the Restoration he was deprived of all his offices.
Rutherford's political book Lex, Rex (meaning "the law [and] the king" or "the law [is] king") presented a theory of limited government and constitutionalism. It was an explicit refutation of the doctrine of "Rex Lex" or "the king is the law." Rutherford was also known for his spiritual and devotional works, such as Christ Dying and drawing Sinners to Himself and his Letters.