RUTHERFURD or Rutherford, Samuel (1600-1661), Scottish divine, was born about 1600 at the village of Nisbet in Roxburghshire. He is supposed to have received his early education at Jedburgh, and he entered the university of Edinburgh in 1617. He graduated M.A. in 1621, and two years afterwards was elected professor of humanity. On account of some alleged indiscretion or irregularity connected with his marriage in 1625, he resigned his professorship in that year, but, after studying theology, he was in 1627 appointed minister of An-woth, Kirkcudbrightshire, where he displayed remarkable diligence and zeal, alike as preacher, pastor, and student, and soon took a leading place among the clergy of Galloway. In 1636 his first book, entitled Exerdtationes de Gratia —an elaborate treatise against Arminianism—appeared at Amsterdam, and attracted some attention both in Great Britain and on the Continent. Combined with his strict and non-conforming presbyterianism, the severe Calvinism set forth in this work led to a prosecution by the new bishop of the diocese, Sydserff, in the High Commission Court, first at Wigtown and afterwards at Edinburgh, with the result that Rutherfurd was deposed from his pastoral office, and sentenced to confinement in Aberdeen during the king’s pleasure. His banishment lasted from September 1636 to February 1638, and was chiefly remarkable for the epistolary activity he displayed, the greater number of his published Letters belonging to this period of his life. He was present at the signing of the Covenant in Edinburgh in 1638, and afterwards at the meeting of the Glasgow Assembly the same year, which restored him to his parish. In 1639 he was appointed professor of divinity in St Mary’s College, St Andrews, and shortly afterwards became ...colleague to Robert Blair in the church of St Andrews. He was sent up to London in 1643 as one of the eight commissioners from Scotland to the Westminster Assembly. Arriving along with Baillie in November, and remaining at his post over three years, he did great service to the cause of his party. In 1642 he had published his Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul’s Presby-tede in Scotland, and the sequel to it in 1644 on The Due Right of Presbyteries provoked Milton's contemptuous reference to “mere A. S. and Rutherfurd” in his sonnet On the New Forcers of Consdence under the Long Parliament. In 1644 also appeared Rutherfurd’s Lex Rex, a Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People, which gives him a recognized place among the early writers on constitutional law; it was followed by The Divine Right of Church Government (1646), and Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649). Among his other works are the Tryal and Triumph of Faith (1645), Chdst Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself (1647), and Survey of the Spirtual Antichrist (1648). In 1647 he returned to St Andrews to become principal of the New College there, and in 1648 and 1651 he declined successive invitations to theological chairs at Harderwijk and Utrecht. His last days were assailed by the persecution which followed the
Restoration in 1660. His Lex Rex was ordered to be burned at the cross of Edinburgh, and also at the gate of the college. He was deprived of all his offices, and on a charge of high treason was cited to appear before the ensuing parliament. His health, however, now utterly broke down, and knowing that he had not long to live he drew up, on 26th February 1661, a Testimony, which was posthumously published. He died on the 20th of the following March.
The fame of Rutherfurd now rests principally upon his remarkable Letters, on which Wodrow thus comments:—“He seems to have outdone even himself as w τ ell as everybody else in his admirable and every way singular letters, which, though jested upon by profane wits because of some familiar expressions, yet will be owned of all who have any relish of piety to contain such sublime flights of devotion and to be fraughted with such massy thoughts as loudly speak a soul united to Jesus Christ in the closest embraces, and must needs at once ravish and edify every serious reader.” In addition to the other works already mentioned, Rutherfurd published in 1651 a treatise De Divina Provulentia, against Molinism, Socinianism, and Arminianism, of which Richard Baxter, not without justice, remarked that “as the Letters were the best piece so this was the worst he had ever read.”
The Letters, to the number of 215, were first published anonymously by M ’ Ward, an amanuensis, at Rotterdam, in 1664. They have been frequently reprinted, the best edition (365 letters) being that by Rev. A. A. Bonar, 1848, with a sketch of his life. See also a short Life by Rev. Dr Andrew Thomson, 1884.
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