MADAM, -- Saluting your Ladyship with grace and mercy from God our
Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. I was sorry, at my departure,
leaving your Ladyship in grief, and would be still grieved at it if I
were not assured that ye have one with you in the furnace whose visage
is like unto the Son of God. I am glad that ye have been acquainted
from your youth with the wrestlings of God, knowing that if ye were not
dear to God, and if your health did not require so much of Him, He
would not spend so much physic upon you. All the brethren and sisters
of Christ must be conform to His image and copy in suffering (Rom.
8.29). And some do more vividly resemble the copy than others. Think,
Madam, that it is a part of your glory to be enrolled among those whom
one of the elders pointed out to John, 'These are they which came out
of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb.' Ye have lost a child: nay she is not lost to
you who is found to Christ. She is not sent away, but only sent before,
like unto a star, which going out of our sight doth not die and vanish,
but shineth in another hemisphere. We see her not, yet she doth shine
in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth
of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and ye have to rejoice that
ye have now some plenishing up in heaven. Build your nest upon no tree
here; for ye see God hath sold the forest to death; and every tree
whereupon we would rest is ready to be cut down, to the end we may fly
and mount up, and build upon the Rock, and dwell in the holes of the
Rock. What ye love besides Jesus, your husband, is an adulterous lover.
Now it is God's special blessing to Judah, that He will not let her
find her paths in following her strange lovers. 'Therefore, behold I
will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall not
find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall
not overtake them' (Hos. 2.6-7). O thrice happy Judas, when God
buildeth a double stone wall betwixt her and the fire of hell! The
world, and the things of the world, Madam, is the lover ye naturally
affect beside your own husband Christ. The hedge of thorns and the wall
which God buildeth in your way, to hinder you from this lover, is the
thorny hedge of daily grief, loss of children, weakness of body,
iniquity of the time, uncertainty of estate, lack of worldly comfort,
fear of God's anger for old unrepented-of sins. What lose ye, if God
twist and plait the hedge daily thicker? God be blessed, the Lord will
not let you find your paths. Return to your first husband. Do not
weary, neither think that death walketh towards you with a slow pace.
Ye must be riper ere ye be shaken. Your days are no longer than Job's,
that were 'swifter than a post, and passed away as the ships of desire,
and as the eagle that hasteth for the prey' (9, 25, 26, margin). There
is less sand in your glass now than there was yesternight. This
span-length of ever-posting time will soon be ended. But the greater is
the mercy of God, the more years ye get to advise, upon what terms, and
upon what conditions, ye cast your soul in the huge gulf of
never-ending eternity. The Lord hath told you what ye should be doing
till He come; 'wait and hasten (saith Peter,) for the coming of the
Lord'; all is night that is here, in respect of ignorance and daily
ensuing troubles, one always making way to another, as the ninth wave
of the sea to the tenth; therefore sigh and long for the dawning of
that morning, and the breaking of that day of the coming of the Son of
man, when the shadows shall flee away. Persuade yourself the King is
coming; read His letter sent before Him, 'Behold, I come quickly.' Wait
with the wearied night-watch for the breaking of the eastern sky, and
think that you have not a morrow. I am loath to weary you; show
yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring; -- in patience
possess your soul: they lose nothing who gain Christ. I commend you to
the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus.
ANWOTH, Jan, 15, 1629
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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.