MISTRESS, -- Grace, mercy, and peace be to you. -- If death, which is
before you and us all, were any other thing than a friendly
dissolution, and a change, not a destruction of life, it would seem a
hard voyage to go through such a sad and dark trance, so thorny a
valley, as is the wages of sin. But I am confident the way ye know,
though your foot never trod in that black shadow. The loss of life is
gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging home,
at the end of your journey, there is no fear; ye go to a friend. And
since ye have had communion with Him in this life, and He has a pawn or
pledge of yours, even the largest share of your love and heart, ye may
look death in the face with joy.
But though He be the same Christ in the other life that ye found Him
to be here, yet He is so far in His excellency, beauty, sweetness,
irradiations, and beams of majesty, above what He appeared here, when
He is seen as He is, that ye shall misken Him, and He shall appear a
new Christ: as water at the fountain, apples in the orchard and beside
the tree, have more of their native sweetness, taste, and beauty, than
when transported to us some hundred miles.
I mean not that Christ can lose any of His sweetness in the carrying,
or that He, in His Godhead and loveliness of presence, can be changed
to the worse, betwixt the little spot of the earth that ye are in, and
the right hand of the Father far above all heavens. But the change will
be in you, when ye shall have new senses, and the soul shall be a more
deep and more capacious vessel, to take in more of Christ; and when
means (the chariot, the Gospel, that He is now carried in, and
ordinances that convey Him) shall be removed. Sure ye cannot now be
said to see Him face to face; or to drink of the wine of the highest
fountain, or to take in seas and tides of fresh love immediately,
without vessels or messengers, at the Fountain itself, as ye will do a
few days hence, when ye shall be so near as to be with Christ.
Death is but an awesome step, over time and sin, to sweet Jesus
Christ, who knew and felt the worst of death, for death's teeth hurt
Him. We know death has no teeth now, no jaws, for they are broken. It
is a free prison; citizens pay nothing for the grave. The jailer who
had the power of death is destroyed: praise and glory be to the
First-begotten of the dead.
The worst possible that may be is, that ye leave behind you children,
husband and the church of God in miseries. But ye cannot get them to
heaven with you for the present. Ye shall not miss them, and Christ
cannot miscount one of the poorest of His lambs. No lad, no girl, no
poor one shall be a-missing in the day that the Son shall render up the
kingdom to His Father.
As for the church which ye leave behind you, the government is upon
Christ's shoulders, and He will plead for the blood of His saints. The
Bush has been burning above five thousand years, and we never yet saw
the ashes of this fire. Yet a little while, and the vision shall not
tarry: it will speak, and not lie. I am more afraid of my duty, than of
the Head Christ's government. He cannot fail to bring judgment to
victory.
Now, if I have found favor with you, and if ye judge me faithful, my
last suit to you is that ye would leave me a legacy; and that is, that
my name may be, at the very last, in your prayers: as I desire also, it
may be in the prayers of those of your Christian acquaintance with whom
ye have been intimate.
LONDON, Jan 9, 1646
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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.