Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Biography
- 3 The scholar
- 4 The Puritan pastor
- 5 The Reformed theologian
- 6 The political theorist
- 7 The ecclesiastical statesman
- 8 The national prophet
- Conclusion: The failure of godly rule
- Bibliography of Samuel Rutherford
- General bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Biography
- 3 The scholar
- 4 The Puritan pastor
- 5 The Reformed theologian
- 6 The political theorist
- 7 The ecclesiastical statesman
- 8 The national prophet
- Conclusion: The failure of godly rule
- Bibliography of Samuel Rutherford
- General bibliography
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
On a hilltop above the tiny hamlet of Anwoth in south-west Scotland there stands a fifty-six foot granite obelisk. Erected in the mid-nineteenth century, its inscription praises the parish's former minister, the Covenanter Samuel Rutherford, for his ‘distinguished public labours in the cause of civil and religious liberty’. Its presence is indicative of Rutherford's posthumous fame, a fame which rested above all on his political treatise Lex, Rex, and on his pious Letters. Rutherford was lionised by Victorian Evangelicals as a towering defender of constitutional freedoms and as one of the greatest devotional writers in the history of the church. His Letters passed through approximately one hundred editions (including at least twenty in foreign languages), formed the basis for a popular hymn, turned Anwoth into a place of pilgrimage, and made Rutherford the subject of numerous popular essays and biographies. Even in the 1980s, his Letters were still in print, and Lex, Rex was being cited by the religious right in the United States as an important influence on the US Constitution and a powerful justification for civil disobedience to liberal abortion laws. One American admirer – as unaware as the obelisk-builders of Rutherford's support for persecution – went so far as to establish an international ‘Rutherford Institute’ to protect religious freedom.
However, Rutherford's Evangelical admirers were not the only ones to stress his historical significance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Politics, Religion and the British RevolutionsThe Mind of Samuel Rutherford, pp. 1 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997