DEARLY-BELOVED IN THE LORD, -- I long exceedingly to hear of the case of
your soul, which has a large share both of my prayers and careful
thoughts. Sir, remember that a precious treasure and prize is upon this
short play that ye are now upon. Even the eternity of well or wo to
your soul standeth upon the little point of your well or ill-employed
short and swift-posting sand glass. Seek the Lord while He may be
found; the Lord waiteth upon you.
And sinning against light will put out your candle, and stupefy your
conscience, and bring upon it more coverings and skin, and less feeling
and sense of guiltiness; and when that is done, the devil is like a mad
horse that has broken his bridle and runneth away with his rider
whither he listeth. Learn to know that which the apostle knew, the
deceitfulness of sin. Strive to make prayer and reading and holy
company and holy conference your delight; and when delight cometh in,
ye shall by little and little smell the sweetness of Christ, till at
length your soul be over head and ears in Christ's sweetness. Then
shall ye be taken up to the top of the mountain with the Lord, to know
the ravishments of spiritual love, and the glory and excellency of a
seen, revealed, felt, and embraced Christ: and then ye shall not be
able to loose yourself off Christ, and to bind your soul to old lovers.
Then, and never till then, are all the paces, motions, balkings, and
wheels of your soul in a right tune, and in a spiritual temper.
But if this world and its lusts be your delight, I know not what
Christ can make of you; ye cannot be metal to be a vessel of glory and
mercy. As the Lord liveth, thousand thousands are beguiled with
security, because God and wrath and judgment are not terrible to them.
Stand in awe of God and of the warnings of a checking and rebuking
conscience. Make others to see Christ in you, moving, doing, speaking
and thinking. Your actions will smell of Him if He be in you. There is
an instinct in the new-born babes of Christ, like the instinct of
nature that leads birds to build their nests, and bring forth their
young, and love such and such places, as woods, forests, and
wildernesses, better than other places. The instinct of nature maketh a
man love his mother-country above all countries; the instinct of
renewed nature, and supernatural grace, will lead you to such and such
works, as to love your country above, to sigh to be clothed with your
house not made with hands, and to call your borrowed prison here below
a borrowed prison, and to look upon it servant-like and pilgrim-like.
And the pilgrim's eye and look is a disdainfullike, discontented cast
of his eye, his heart crying after his eye, 'Fy, fy, this is not like
my country.'
I recommend to you the mending of a hole, and reforming of a failing,
one or other, every week; and put off a sin, or a piece of it, as
anger, wrath, lust, intemperance, every day, that ye may more easily
master the remnant of your corruption. God has given you a wife; love
her, and let her breasts satisfy you; and, for the Lord's sake, drink
no waters but out of your own cistern. Strange wells are poison. Strive
to learn some new way against your corruption from the man of God, Mr
W. D. [William Dalgleish], or other servants of God. Sleep not sound,
till ye find yourself in that case that ye dare look death in the face,
and durst hazard your soul upon eternity. I am sure that many ells and
inches of the short thread of your life are by-hand since I saw you;
and that thread has an end; and ye have no hands to cast a knot, and
add one day, or a finger-breadth, to the end of it. When hearing, and
seeing, and the outer walls of the clay house shall fall down, and life
shall render the besieged castle of clay to death and judgment, and ye
find your time worn ebb, and run out, what thoughts will you then have
of idol-pleasures, that possibly are now sweet? What bud or hide would
you then give for the Lord's favor? And what a price would you then
give for pardon? It were not amiss to think, 'What if I were to receive
a doom, and to enter into a furnace of fire and brimstone? What if it
come to this, that I shall have no portion but utter darkness? And what
if I be brought to this, to be banished from the presence of God, and
to be given over to God's sergeants, the devil and the power of the
second death?' Put your soul, by supposition, in such a case, and
consider what horror would take hold of you, and what ye would then
esteem of pleasing yourself in the course of sin. Oh, dear Sir, for the
Lord's sake awake to live righteously, and love your poor soul! And
after ye have seen this my letter, say with yourself, 'The Lord will
seek an account of this warning which I have received.'
Lodge Christ in your family. Receive no stranger hireling as your
pastor. I bless your children. 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.