Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) and Christian Experience
Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) and Christian Experience
Evangelicals have long recognized the unique character of Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, ensuring their perennial popularity. Rutherford’s contemporary, Richard Baxter, remarked that, excepting the Scriptures, the world had never seen a book quite like Rutherford’s Letters. C. H. Spurgeon had the highest of praise: “When we are dead and gone,” he wrote, “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.”1 Principal John Macleod reckoned them “the most remarkable series of devotional letters that the literature of the Reformed Churches can show.”2
Robert McWard, Rutherford’s close colleague, first edited the Letters. In the original preface, McWard comments on Rutherford: “If thou wilt but converse with him a little, it may be thou find thy heart burn within thee while thou talkest with this warm soul, whose words seem, as they drop, to cast fire into the affections, and set the heart in a flame.”3 A later editor of some of Rutherford’s sermons commented, “His style is savoury to a spiritual taste, and also moving. As he was pious and devout, without affectation, he had a particular talent of handling divine things so as to fix the attentions and affect the heart. This gustus pietatis [taste of piety] that is so discernible in his writings, and for which he was so famous, is a clear evidence of a rich stock of grace and a large unction from the Holy One.”4
Rutherford’s other works are not as widely known as his letters, yet many of them have the same intense devotional character and spiritual power. This brief volume seeks to summarize the distinctive insight into Christian experience witnessed in Rutherford’s writings and to introduce their devotional qualities. Rutherford’s spirit is well summed up in some of his own words:
Strive to make prayer and reading and holy company and holy conference your delight; and when delight comes in, you 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 you 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 you shall not be able to loose yourself off Christ, and to bind your soul to old lovers.5
The Necessity of Christian Experience
Samuel Rutherford was born around the year 1600 in Nisbet, a small village in the Scottish Borders. Rutherford later reflected that it was a place where “Christ was scarce named, as touching any reality or power of godliness.”6 Some of Rutherford’s remarks in his letters indicate that his conversion most likely took place at university in Edinburgh when he was well into his twenties. He laments not having followed Christ much earlier. In a letter to Robert Stuart he writes, “Ye have gotten a great advantage in the way of heaven, that ye have started to the gate in the morning. Like a fool, as I was, I suffered my sun to be high in the heaven, and near afternoon, before I ever took the gate by the end.”7
It is likely, however, that his first experience of Christ was a powerful one when we consider his words: “At the Lord’s first meeting with a sinner, the Lord opens his heart by grace to let Him in, and there they sup together. There is a feast of love between them.” Also, “No man can love Christ till He love him first, because our love of Christ is nothing else but an effect of this love to us…. So we may learn to sing for ever a song of free grace shown in our conversion.”8 Rutherford explains this further in another sermon: “When sinners have been going on into a course of rebellion, running away from God, after their humiliation ordinarily He fills them with a feast of the sense of His love, all their days they cannot forget.” God begins His work of grace by shattering the “towers of pride, of worldly-mindedness, of filthiness,” but then overwhelms the sinner with His presence and His beauty.9
Believing that “faith…worketh by love” (Gal. 5:6), Rutherford emphasizes the centrality of the affections in the soul, which are
like the needle, the rest of the soul like the thread; and as the needle makes way and draws the thread, so holy affections pull forward and draw all to Jesus. The affections are the lower part of the soul, and when they are filled they set all the soul on work; when there is any love in the affections, it sets all the rest of the faculties of the soul on work to duty, and when there is any corruption in the affections, it stagnates the soul, will, mind, and conscience. Affections are the feet of the soul, and the wheels whereupon the conscience runs. When a man is off his feet he cannot run or walk; so when the affections are lame, the soul moves on crutches.10
Rutherford compares the sinner in conversion to a fish hooked by the angler. The affections are moved, and faith works by these affections. Perhaps there was much of his first experience of grace in this description:
As when a fish is taken there are two actions, the bait alluring and beguiling the fish with hope of meat. This is like the working of the word which is Christ’s bait; but when He wins us to dry land, then, when the fish is hooked, there is a real action of the fisher, drawing and hauling the fish to land; it leapeth and flightering [fluttering] and wresthng while it bleeds with the hook. And this answereth to the Holy Spirit’s powerful hauling and drawing of the soul in all the affections, that the soul feeleth joy, comfort, delight, desire, longing, believing, nibbling and biting Christ’s bait.11
For Rutherford, true religion involves spiritual experience just as much as belief in right doctrine and holy obedience to the Word of God. Life’s goal is to enjoy God as well as to glorify Him. Rutherford would have agreed with his pupil, the Covenanter Robert Fleming (son of the minister James Fleming, with whom Rutherford corresponded), on the subject of Christian experience. Fleming writes,
Oh what an empty thing religion should be if it had not this word experience in its grammar; that secret and sure mark whereby the Christian knoweth the scripture is of God; how thus the Lord hath sealed their instruction in a dark plunge; how life and power, enlivening influences, to the melting of their heart have oft trysted them in a very dead frame and now they know that verily God heareth prayer; now they are persuaded and have learned by the cross that he is indeed a comforter.”12
Some professing Christians seem to avoid experience in the Christian life and are reluctant to be too “all out” for Christ. The type of person that cannot “bide heat and forwardness in religion” complains: “I love Christ…but I would not make a blowing horn of my religion. They shall never know upon what side I am.”13 This half-hearted man is afraid that too much zeal in Christian things will affect his material prosperity and status in this world, but the Scriptures tell us, “It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing” (Gal. 4:18). In his letters Rutherford continually urges the necessity of giving diligence to make our personal calling and election sure: “Heaven is not at the next door. I find Christianity to be a hard task…. We would all keep both Christ and our right eye, our right hand and foot; but it will not do with us.”14 “God detesteth lukewarmness, and coldness in His matters and demands ‘all the heart, all the soul, all the strength’ of His people (Deut. 6:5). [Even] if you had ten tongues to speak for God, a hundred hands to fight for Him, many lives to lose for Him, Ahithophel’s wisdom to employ in His services, except you engage the heart and affections in His service, you do nothing to Him” (1 Cor. 13).15
The temptation of an insincere appeal to Christ is powerful; we are all too comfortable in Zion, enthusiastic to be saved and happy but not so much to be saved and holy. “Oh, how many of us would have Christ divided into two halves, that we might take the half of Him only! We take His office, Jesus, and Salvation: but ‘Lord’ is a cumbersome word, and to obey and work out our own salvation, and to perfect holiness, is the cumbersome and stormy northside of Christ that we eschew and shift [avoid].”16
Prayer and Christian Experience
Samuel Rutherford began his ministry in Anwoth, Kirkcudbrightshire, during 1627, being ordained in the Presbyterian way, which did not require him to give any acknowledgment to the bishop. Prayer was key to Rutherford’s ministry in Anwoth. Those who knew him said that he seemed “to be always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechizing, always writing and studying.”17 Rutherford and his contemporaries seem to have been especially eminent in prayer.18 Bonar says that Rutherford was a man so enraptured with Christ that he “was known to fall asleep at night talking of Christ, and even to speak of Him during his sleep.”19 Rutherford himself wrote that “even to dream of Him is sweet.”20 Arising at three o’clock each morning in order to pray, he was in constant, earnest intercession for his flock. “There I wrestled with the Angel and prevailed,” he says. “Wood, trees, meadows and hills are my witnesses, that I drew on a fair meeting betwixt Christ and [the congregation at] Anwoth.”21 Also, at Anwoth he made a covenant with young George Gillespie that each would pray for the other throughout the rest of their days.22
Besides his letters, so full of spiritual prayer for fellow believers, the lost, the church, and the in-gathering of the Jews, Rutherford wrote various books that are extremely helpful for understanding prayer. The Trial and Triumph of Faith considers the patient, humble, and persevering prayers of the Syro-Phoenician woman in her entreaties to Christ. The Power of Faith and Prayer is a set of sermons on the two blind men in Matthew 9:27–31 who follow Christ, crying out to Him for mercy. The Influences of the Life of Grace is a practical treatise that deals with the vital theme of our need for the gracious influences of the Holy Spirit upon us and prayer as an all-important means to this end.
Prayer must be in faith. As Rutherford puts it, “Praying without faith is breathing of wind, and sounds without life…. But praying with faith is like the breathings of a living man, that is hot and nourishes life, and keeps the body in a vital heat of life as long as it continues in the body.”23 Before we pray, we should also consider the state and frame of our heart and prepare it; otherwise, our prayer will be the sacrifice of fools. It is impossible to pray acceptably in anger, deceitfulness, worldly mindedness, or pride.24 We must pray in order to pray rather than rush headlong into duties. “Prayer is like God’s file to stir a rusty heart.”25 There are, of course, exceptions to this, such as ejaculatory prayers or emergency cries that we must simply send to heaven impulsively rather than prepare ourselves; but ordinarily there should be preparation.26
The Spirit of adoption is the Spirit of prayer, making us cry, “Abba, Father.” Earthly children, “because they are sons, seek all things they need from their father.”27 In his catechism Rutherford asks, “How shall we know that we are adopted?” The practical response follows: “If we can pray to our Father; if we be in fashion like our Father and our brother Christ, serving for the inheritance as heirs, not for the moveables as slaves.”28
“No music delights [God] more [than] the sighs and tears, complaints and prayers of his children.”29 Rutherford emphasized that vehemence and crying in prayer are both necessary and natural. Hunger and necessity cannot afford to be modest and understated. “An arrow drawn with full strength hath a speedier flight; therefore, the prayers of the saints are expressed by crying in Scripture.” Christ prayed with “strong crying and tears” or “war-shouts…. The cry addeth wings to the prayer.” It is effectual—“This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Ps. 34:6). Vehement prayer is importunate. James 5:16 asserts that prayer is fervent as well as effectual, and this word fervent, as Rutherford explains, literally intimates “prayer possessed with…fervour of spirit.”30 Fervent, vehement prayer is called “wresthng, as Jacob by prayer wrestled with God. Now, in wresthng, the whole man is employed and all his strength, all the bones, nerves, legs and arms of the soul are set to work in praying.”31 Jacob had a princely power over the angel and prevailed; he wept and made supplication to Him.
Rutherford deals with practical difficulties that believers may face in their prayer struggles. Even broken prayers are heard: “Every broken parcel of prayer is prayer,” he counsels. To those who lament “I find I cannot speak at all,” he notes that even groaning, tears, or just a look are all classified as prayer in Scripture (Pss. 6:8; 69:3; 102:20; Isa. 38:14). “Words are but the body, the garment, the outside of prayer; sighs are nearer the heart-work.”32 What about when we are not answered in our prayers? This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of prayer to deal with. Why does prayer seem to be unanswered? How do we know when we are answered? In respect to the first question, Rutherford responds that the delay in answers to prayer has a merciful and beneficial aspect to it. “Christ often heareth when He doth not answer; His not answering is an answer, and speaks thus, Pray on, go on, and cry; for the Lord holdeth His door fast bolted, not to keep out, but that you may knock and knock. Patience to wait for the answer is itself an answer. Prayer is to God, worship; to us, often, it is but a servant upon mere necessity sent on a business.”33 Even prayers that would seem to be lost and wasted are not so at all; they are both heard and answered. Rutherford explains:
I may pray for victory to God’s people in a battle; they lose, yet I am heard and answered because I prayed for that victory not under the notion of victory, but as linked with mercy to the church and the honor of Christ. The formal object of my prayers was a spiritual mercy to the church and the honor of Jesus Christ. The Lord hath shown mercy to His people by humbling them and glorifies His Son in preserving a fallen people. He hears what is spiritual and not the errors.34
We are heard when we ask in faith according to God’s will. How shall we know we are answered? Hannah knew because of peace after prayer. Paul knew by receiving new supply to bear the want of what he sought in prayer. Liberty and boldness of faith are other indications.
Conscience and Christian Experience
Rutherford’s ministry in Anwoth was not to continue unmolested, however. He had conscientiously avoided acknowledging the bishop at his ordination, and now he spoke out publicly against the Arminian doctrine that the bishops were seeking to popularize. His first publication, Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Divina Gratia, which opposed the Arminian error that had become such a close ally of episcopacy and semi-Roman Catholic ceremonialism, led to his being tried before the High Commission in 1636. It was for publishing this treatise, for failing to recognize the authority of the High Commission and not giving the bishops their titles, such as “lord,” that he was deposed and exiled to Aberdeen.
Rutherford was content to suffer for the cause of Christ. Like Robert Bruce before him, who also had been punished with banishment, he always maintained the vital importance of the conscience. It was, he believed, “the principal part of [the] soul…. The judging part of the soul under God, teaching and counseling good and comforting us when we do it…and forbidding ill and tormenting us after we have committed ill.”35 Rutherford argued that the conscience is “something of God, a domestic little God, a keeper sent from heaven.”36 He emphasized our solemn responsibility in relation to our conscience: “Seeing we carry our judge with us in our breast which we take either to heaven or hell with us, and cannot put on or off our conscience as we do our garments, we should fear to sin before our conscience.”37
An individual’s conscience should not therefore merely “lie beside him as the wretch’s Gold, which for many years seeth neither sun nor wind; but it is a Conscience walking in the streets, and in action.”38 It should be active, but it should not always be trusted. Since conscience can be mistaken for fancy, novelty, or heresy, it must be informed by and in subjection to the Word of God: “The more of knowledge, the more of conscience, as the more of fire, the more heat.”39 Again, Rutherford emphasizes the authority of God’s Word: “The Word of God must be the rule of conscience, and conscience is a servant, and an under-judge only, not a Lord.”40
Conscience, therefore, should be tender and sensitive. “It cannot be denied but the more tenderness, the more of God, and the more of conscience; but by tenderness is meant fear and awesomeness of sin.”41 He once wrote to his congregation, exhorting them: “Hold fast what ye have received. Keep the truth once delivered. If ye or that people quit it in a hair, or in a hoof, ye break your conscience in twain; and who then can mend it, and cast a knot on it?”42 Like the apostle Paul, Rutherford could say, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men” (Acts 24:16).
The Heights of Christian Experience
It is to this period of exile in Aberdeen that we owe over 220 of Rutherford’s 365 letters. Here, in his isolation, Rutherford trysted with the Lord Jesus Christ in especially deep soul communion. “I find that my extremity hath sharpened the edge of His love and kindness, as that He seemeth to devise new ways of expressing the sweetness of His love to my soul.”43 In his letters we find that he overflows in speaking of Christ. He expresses this necessity of glorifying Christ in a letter to Viscount Kenmure: “I must tell you what lovely Jesus, fair Jesus, King Jesus hath done to my soul.”44 In Aberdeen, Rutherford rejoiced in a springtime of spiritual experience, and he could say, “Lo, the winter is past” (Song 2:11). He describes these heights of spiritual experience: “The believer hath flowings of strong acts of faith, joy, love; supernatural passions of grace arising to a high spring-tide, above the banks and ordinary coasts.”45
At such times Christ brings His beloved into His banqueting house, where they are “feasted with love banquets.”46 Although such feasts are not the portion of all saints at all times, none of Christ’s people are ever restricted: “He alloweth feasts to all the bairns [children] within God’s household.”47 The joy to be anticipated in Communion seasons belongs to the faithful who discern them as feasts, “wherein our Well-Beloved Jesus rejoiceth and is merry with His friends.”48 As Rutherford puts it, using the language of the Song of Solomon, “There is a time when [Christ] comes to His garden to feast upon the honeycomb and His spiced wine, and then the spouse has a rich feast of love and of the dainties of Heaven, and is taken in to the King’s house of wine and Christ’s banner over her is love (Song 2:4). ‘And His left hand is under’ her ‘head, and his right hand doth embrace’ her (Song 2:6).”49
Rutherford learned not to make too much of these experiences, however. He knew that he could not always expect these heights of spiritual experience, as he explains,
As there are some highest manifestations of God, in which experience teaches us that the saints would not be able to keep the use of a tabernacle of clay with that little Heaven, so neither are the saints to make high manifestations God’s constant rule. As David’s soul is filled with marrow and fatness, he may desire the same again. “My soul thirsteth for thee…in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary” (Ps. 63:1–2)…. Again, let a believer have such a rapture as Paul had, when ravished to the third heaven, as the saints may have the like in another spiritual way, yet is he not to lay down this ground: “Sure I shall have as high a manifestation of God, ere I die, as this was.” Are believers, when heightened above their ordinary in the visions of God here below, to conclude that they shall have as sweet and as high manifestations of God again? No, they are not, unless it were revealed that it shall be so.50
The Focus of Christian Experience
Like the psalmist, Rutherford could say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” (Ps. 73:25). “Let me have no joy but the warmness and fire of Christ’s love; I seek no other, God knoweth. If this love be taken from me, the bottom is fallen out of all my happiness and joy.”51 He often said that heaven would be no heaven at all and he would be unwilling to go there if Christ Himself were not there.52 The Christian’s “affections leap out and embrace Christ about the neck.”53 There is an exclusive focus: “Nothing is fixedly sought after, but God, He only feared and served…. [He] only desired…the soul sick of love for only Christ.”54 Whereas our “duties to Prince, parents, husband, wife, children, [and] Parliament” require only “half” affections, God alone seeks the whole of our affections, such that with David, we seek “after the living God,” longing, fainting, and crying out for Him.55
He encourages others to enjoy the same experience of Christ: “Brother, I may, from new experience, speak of Christ to you. Oh, if ye saw in Him what I see! A river of God’s unseen joys has flowed from bank to brae [above ordinary bounds] over my soul since I parted with you. I wish that I wanted part, so being ye might have; that your soul might be sick of love for Christ, or rather satiated with Him.”56 Rutherford counseled that much time must be given in secret to cultivating communion with Christ. We ought increasingly to value Christ in His person and work. “Estimation produceth love, even the love of Christ; and love is a great favorite, and is much at court, and dwelleth constantly with the king. To be much with Christ, especially in secret, late and early, and to give much time to converse with Christ, speaketh much love; and the love of Christ is of the same largeness and quantity with grace, for grace and love keep proportion one with another.”57
Rutherford’s description of true love in exercise to Christ probes our own experience acutely:
This speaks much soul-love to be where he is. Cant. [Song] 1:7…. To be able to write a spiritual chronicle and history of all Christ’s stirrings towards your soul saith ye have letters daily, and good intelligence of the affairs of the Spirit, and of the King’s Court, and that He writes to you, as Cant. 5:1. “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice, I have eaten my honey-comb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk”: then will Christ write a letter to spiritual ones, and (as it were, with reverence to His holiness) give a sort of account where He is, what He does, what thoughts He hath to us. O! how few know this?58
The ultimate emphasis of experience must always be upon Christ alone. Sometimes Rutherford corrects himself, as it were, to say that Christ is more to be extolled than His gifts: “I would not have Christ’s love entering into me, but I would enter into it, and be swallowed up of that love. But I see not myself here; for I fear I make more of His love than of Himself; whereas Himself is far beyond and much better than His love.”59 Rutherford believed passionately that life is to be lived with Christ preeminent in everything. “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21) was the motto written over all of his life. His life was so much intertwined with the Lord Jesus that he could speak concerning a trial that “Christ and I will bear it.”60 The most glorious and simplest truth that he knew was, “my Christ is God,” and having made this humble but intimate confession he says, “I have said all things, I can say no more. I would that I could build as much on this, ‘My Christ is God,’ as it would bear. I might lay all the world upon it.”61
Rutherford loved to trace Christ’s love for him back to eternity and the covenant made with the Father:
Was His consent to the Covenant but as late and young as since Adam fell or Abraham was called to leave his country and his father’s house (Gen. 3; 12)? Ah! It’s an older love than so: A yesterday’s love, time-mercy, a grace of the age with the world could not have saved me. Nor were our Charters and Writs of Gospel-grace first drawn up in Paradise. Nay, but copies and doubles of them only were given to Adam in Paradise. The love of God is no younger than God and was never younger to sinners…. I desire to hold me fast by that: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3).62
The Depths of Christian Experience
Grace has its winter as well as its springtime or summer, and the felt presence of Christ easily gives way to keenly felt absence.63 The floods of the high springtide quickly drain away: “Often the time of some extreme desertion and soul-trouble is, when Christ hath been in the soul with a full, high spring tide of divine manifestations of Himself.”64 This is the nature of Christian experience according to Rutherford. “The condition in ebbings and flowings, in full manifestations and divine raptures of another world, when the wind bloweth right from heaven, and the breath of Jesus Christ’s mouth, and of sad absence, runneth through the Song of Solomon, the book of Psalms, the book of Job.”65
Even this absence can be fruitful, however, since it encourages longing for Christ’s return: “Sick nights for the Lord’s absence in not drawing are most spiritual signs.”66 This withdrawing is good for our growth and for quickening our desires for Him: “As night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ’s absence of special use…. It hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility.” When Christ is absent, our obedience is “quicker and more powerful” than it is “under feeling and presence.”67 “Patient submission to God under desertion is sweet.”68 Rutherford counsels that when our consciences undergo a deep sense of sin and we sense the absence of God’s favor, “we should not give sleep to our eyes [until] we confess and repent, and should seek to the covenant and mercy of God who cannot forget us.”69 He is conscious that this is not always attainable, however, for the weak and troubled believer. “Then, like a man in a dark house who cannot see either door or window, but [gropes] to the door with his hands, we should deem well of God, still believe and run to old experience both in ourselves and others.”70
When we seek Christ above all, we are even able to say, “I love Christ’s worst reproaches, His glooms, His cross, better than all the world’s plastered glory.”71 We must remember that we are not yet in heaven: “There are no desertions in heaven, no hiding of God’s face, no cloud, no night, no change, nothing but a sun in its full strength; always day without night, a full sunshine without a cloud or a shadow. Grace in us is a habit, and not always in action, and our stability here (as touching the other) is Hebrews 13:14: ‘That we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.’”72
The Sovereignty of God in Christian Experience
These depths are to be explained by God’s sovereignty and the providences of His will in apportioning our spiritual experience according to the wisdom of His intimate knowledge of us. There are often times when the “causes of His withdrawings are unknown to us,” because, quite simply, “ways of high sovereignty and dominion of grace are far out of the sight of angels and men.” “His comforts and His answers are His own free graces; He may do with His own what He thinks good, and grace is no debt. ‘Hear, O Lord, for Thy own sake’ (Dan. 9:19).”73 In many cases God’s withdrawing will be a result of sin that hinders communion. It is not always, however, simply the case that we are not seeking the blessing to our utmost. “Christ walks in a path of unsearchable liberty…. Some are in the suburbs of heaven, and feel the dainties of the King’s higher house, ere they are in heaven; and others, children of the same Father, passengers on the same journey, wade through hell, darkness of fears, thorns of doubtings, and have few love-tokens till the marriage day.”74 Our duty is to submit and to persevere in prayer: “If we could but weep upon Him, and in the holy pertinacity of faith wrestle with Him, and say, ‘We will not let Thee go,’ it may be that then, He, who is easy to be entreated, would yet, notwithstanding of our high provocations, condescend to stay and feed among the lilies.”75
Rutherford wrote The Influences of the Life of Grace in order to deal with the question of how divine sovereignty and human responsibility work together in the matter of spiritual growth and experience. It is a neglected theme, although intensely practical for the Christian every day in his devotional life.76 The interrelation of divine sovereignty and human responsibility is a difficult area of doctrine, and Rutherford seeks to expound various portions of Scripture in exploring the issue. On the text Philippians 2:12–13—“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure”—Rutherford comments,
How the connection is between our working and the effectual predeterminating influences of God, is to us dark, but this argument of Paul saith they well agree, and he infers this thesis, they both physically and morally are to work out their salvation, in whom God both by the habit and actual influences of grace worketh to will and to do, then must influences of grace so be at hand when the believers are to act, as they are no less under a precept, and a command to act, believe, pray, than the husband-man is under a command to plow in summer, and to sow, lest he be poor.’77
Rutherford shows that the same connection between divine sovereignty and God’s creation is seen in His work of providence:
Influences are acts of God concurring with created causes under Him, and a sort of continued creation; as God of nothing makes all things, so in His providence He gives a day to all borrowed beings, in their being preserved by Him, and they are the Lord’s debtors, in being acted by Him, or then they could not stir nor move.”78
The Influences of the Life of Grace deals with the question of what believers should do when they do not feel spiritually exercised. Rutherford responds by showing that believers are to do their duty in prayer and worship no matter how they feel. Sometimes Christians can fall into the error of thinking that they can never pray unless they are consciously moved by the Holy Spirit. This is wrong, Rutherford says, because the warrant of prayer is not the gracious influences that the Most High may or may not supply. Our moral duty is determined by the divine command. We must pray for the Spirit’s help, but we must take care to make the Word our only rule, and not our feelings. How can the feelings of the Spirit be known but by the Word? If everything depended on our feelings, the Word would be useless. The command cries to the conscience; the voice of the Lord sounds in the Word. Pray continually. “Call upon me in the day of trouble” (Ps. 50:15). We cannot excuse ourselves by supposing that the Spirit’s influences are absent.
Like the farmer who cannot hold back from plowing and sowing because he does not find a time as desirable as he would like, we have a responsibility to pray, even though we may not feel moved by the Spirit: “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap” (Eccl. 11:4).79 Rutherford emphasizes that we do not have dominion over the actions of the Spirit. God blows in this wind with greater sovereignty than in any natural wind.80
The Lord gives influences according to His will of pleasure (secret will), but we must stir and pray and act according to His will of command (revealed will). This is illustrated throughout Psalm 119 where both prayer and the need of the influences of grace are interwoven. In verse 25 the psalmist writes that God’s influences have been withdrawn: “My soul cleaveth unto the dust.” There immediately follows a petition: “Quicken thou me according to thy word.” This shows how we should respond to the sovereign withdrawal of influences in the secret will of God. We take up the duty of praying according to His revealed will and pray for those very influences to be restored.81
God’s sovereignty is mysterious in connection with prayer, especially a prayer for quickening. Ultimately, such a prayer in faith will be effectual in the experience of the believer. In the meantime, however, the Lord uses prayer to keep the soul under sufficient graces. It provides fresh showers, giving the burned man who patiently endures the fire refreshment, while cooling and expelling the heat. Rutherford says that suffering pain in faith and joy is more excellent than having the pain removed.82
The “Lord’s way of coming to us, and our way of coming to Him” is through His appointed means.83 The “influences of grace,” which are necessary for an individual to persevere to the end in faith, are ordinarily conveyed through the use of means such as prayer, the Scriptures, and the sacraments. Although God has the sovereign liberty to bestow His influences according to His own secret will and purpose, He has promised them in His appointed means.84 The believer must pray away spiritual indisposition. Spiritual dispositions ebb and flow in the diligent use of or neglect of these means.85 What Rutherford speaks of as “spiritual heart-burnings” are spiritual dispositions that should be experienced in the diligent use of these means: “Heavenly heart-burning goes along with the Scriptures…. With the Scriptures so opened and applied by the spirit of Jesus as by a strong power, burning coals are cast into the heart.”86 The whole treatise is a rich contribution to understanding Christian experience in a more biblical and systematic way, while retaining a practical emphasis for the individual believer.
Christian Experience and National Religion
Rutherford believed that grace in exercise would lead Christians to do as much as they can for the cause of Christ in this world: “The more gracious men are, the more public they are” since “he who is for the Bridegroom cannot be against the Bride.”87 For this reason, he saw that public and private duties are inextricably linked together, and his conviction of the sovereign and entire providence of God meant that there was a public significance to individual experience. The signing of the National Covenant at Edinburgh in 1638 was a powerfully personal as well as national act for many. Some signed their name using their own blood. It was publicly sworn with uplifted hands and many tears. As Robert Fleming observed, many could trace their conversion from that time. “Since the land was engaged by covenant to the Lord…what a solemn outletting of the Spirit hath been seen, a large harvest with much of the fruit of the Gospel discernible, which…hath been proved in the inbringing of thousands to Christ.”88
As events developed, there was hope that the reformation and revival witnessed in Scotland would spread to the other parts of the British Isles. Rutherford therefore welcomed the opportunity, as one of the Scottish commissioners, to take part in the Westminster Assembly, which was convened to settle the doctrine, government, and worship of the British churches. He hoped to be instrumental in building “the waste places of Zion in another kingdom.”89 He took up his seat in the assembly in November 1643 and remained in London until November 1647. Here, he published five major books in defense of Presbyterian church government and in opposition to antinomian doctrine. One of the most prominent participants in the Assembly’s debates on theology and church polity, he also preached twice before the Long Parliament, pleading with them to pursue reformation of the church in England and Ireland in uniformity with Scotland. In a sermon preached before the English Parliament in June 1644, he revealed his heart’s longing for peace and unity based on true reformation: “Shall we kill and devour one another all day and lodge together in heaven at night and can we say to one another in heaven, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’…and yet on earth must we be at daggers, at rents, at divisions; are there two Christs because two nations?”90
Rutherford’s perspective in relation to national religion was much the same as the Solemn League and Covenant sworn to by the British Isles in 1643. It began with the vow that “we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavor, in our several places and callings, the preservation of the reformed religion…[in order] that we, and our posterity after us, may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.” It went on to abominate, with Rutherfordian passion, “detestable indifferency or neutrality in this cause.” At the conclusion of the Covenant there is a confession that
we have not endeavored to receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our lives; which are the causes of other sins and transgression so much abounding amongst us: and our true and unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavor, for ourselves, and all others under our power and charge, both in public and private, in all duties we owe to GOD and man, to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation; that the Lord may turn away His wrath and heavy indignation, and establish these Churches and kingdoms in truth and peace.91
Sincere heart covenanting was, therefore, crucial to the oath. The English Puritan Cornelius Burges preached in relation to the covenant that “this joining of ourselves to the Lord, is such, as is made by marriage;…and admits us to the participation of all the most intimate, nearest and choicest expressions of the dearest Love of God, which can be found between the husband and the wife.”92
Many of Rutherford’s letters are written to the nobility of Scotland. He sought to motivate them to use their political influence to further the cause of reformation. In 1648 he published The Last and Heavenly Speeches, And Glorious Departure of John, Viscount Kenmure in order to encourage those in Parliament to advance the cause of true religion. In dedicating the pamphlet, Rutherford writes, “For the Whole Nobility of Scotland, and Others Having Voice in Parliament or Committees: God has set you [noblemen] as stars in the firmament of honor;—upon your influence depends the whole course of the inferior world.”93 The narrative is full of the spiritual expressions of felt absence and presence that we associate with Rutherford’s letters as well as Christ Dying, and Drawing Sinners to Himself, revealing the extent of the influence of this language and experience. The following words were recorded among the last utterances of Kenmure: “Another word was ordinary to him, ‘O Son of God, one love-blink, one smack, one kiss of thy mouth, one smile!’” and, “‘I will wait on; he is worthy the on-waiting. Though he is long in coming, yet I dare say he is coming, leaping over the mountains, and skipping over the hills: if he were once come we should not sunder.’”94 Writing from exile in Aberdeen in 1637, Rutherford counsels Lord Loudon, “It were the glory and honor of you who are the nobles of this land, to plead for your wronged Bridegroom and His oppressed spouse, as far as zeal and standing law will go with you.”95 Later he wrote to the Earl of Cassillis, “Oh, if the nobles had done their part, and been zealous for the Lord! It had not been as it is now.”96
The Confidence of Christian Experience
Adoption has its harvest. It brings forth certain distinguishing fruits, among them hope and prayer. We hope for the inheritance and pray for it, that we may be led unto it. Hope arises from “the feeling of God’s love towards us in Christ” and is an “assured waiting for glory to be revealed even under troubles.” Troubles themselves are only to make us white and ripe for the Lord’s harvest-hook.97 Hope brings forth its own harvest in this world: the fruits of patience, joy, and holiness.98
Although assurance is strengthened by discovering marks of grace within through the work of the Holy Spirit, Christian experience is not self-confident; its confidence is in Christ alone. Samuel Rutherford laid great stress upon the promises of Christ in redemption: “Faith grips the promises and makes us to go out of ourselves to Christ as being homely [familiar] with Him.”99 The promises far outweigh our own changeable feelings, and in many ways, “it is adultery to seek a sign because we cannot rest on our husband’s word.”100 True assurance is not something easily obtained; it must be labored after. Rutherford’s counsel is “to give your soul no rest till ye have real assurance, and Christ’s rights confirmed and sealed to your soul. The common faith, and country-holiness, and week-day zeal, that is among people, will never bring men to heaven. Take pains for your salvation; for in that day, when ye shall see many men’s labors and conquests and idol-riches lying in ashes, when the earth and the works thereof shall be burnt with fire, oh how dear a price would your soul give for God’s favor in Christ!”101
Rutherford believed that Christians should labor after and seek assurance if they were to go on to maturity. This maturity was not something that was in the essence of saving faith so that one could not be a believer without it. It belonged rather to the exercise of faith. Rutherford argued that if mature assurance was of the essence of saving faith and necessary for salvation, then “none should be justified and saved but the strong believer, whereas Christ died for the weak in the faith.”102 “That faith is essentially a persuasion and assurance of the love of God to me in Christ. ’Tis more than I could ever learn to be the nature of faith, a consequent separable I believe it is.”103
Because Christian experience has its shadowed depths as well as its rapturous heights, Rutherford sympathized fully with those who labored after assurance that they were in a state of grace, particularly seeking the direct witnessing testimony of the Holy Spirit. Rutherford described the witness of the Spirit as “the voice of God’s Spirit accompanying the Word, so speaking to the heart and making all the promises of God to be mine as if the new covenant were written and spoken to me by name.”104 Although convinced that many believers could well attain to this, the godly pastor was aware that some with “weak faith” might never know it, having never a “fair sailing, nor fullness of assurance, until they be upon the shore.”105 Nevertheless, Rutherford exhorts one friend: “Make meikle [much] of assurance, for it keepeth your anchor fixed.”106
Sanctification and Christian Experience
Assurance and self-examination go hand in hand. Some professing Christians, however, fear examining the work of grace in their soul. They fear that they will become too cast down by focusing on themselves and finding out their shortcomings. This is a mistake, however, for the believer grows in holiness and grace by examining himself. Rutherford warns against a false self-examination that must be avoided. This errs seriously by not looking to Christ and His perfect work.107 If we look to ourselves without also looking to Christ, we will despair. This work of self-examination is particularly important when we prepare ourselves to partake worthily of the Lord’s Supper. “We are to take the candle of God’s Word and Spirit into the house of our souls, and to search our mind, will, affections etc. and because in the sacrament Christ is to come in, we must put all His enemies, our sins, to the door.”108
In his catechism, Rutherford gives particular emphasis to sanctification and holiness. The explanations of these doctrines are particularly helpful. He asks, “What are the parts of sanctification?” The answer is direct: “In removing of the stony heart and slaying of sin [mortification], and a quickening of us to love righteousness [vivification].” Rutherford then explains how these aspects of sanctification are found in the experience of the believer. Vivification, or a quickening of the soul to love righteousness, is closely related to the finished work of Christ and the believer’s union with Him. “Christ rising from the dead has merited to us newness of life, and His Spirit that raised Him the third day, that death might have no dominion over Him, and that He might ascend to heaven, does quicken us to live to God and seek the things that are above at Christ’s right hand.”109
He defines mortification, or putting sin to death, in an especially vivid way: “For the merit of Christ’s death God slays sin and makes us out of sorrow against our sin that slew Christ, and out of love to Jesus who died for us, hate and loathe our sin, so that sorrow and love are the nails that crucify the body of sin.”110 “We must both crucify our lusts by repentance, and fill our hearts with God’s love, in whom we may find whatever we seek in pleasure, profit, and honor.”111 One example that demonstrates how thorough Rutherford was in exposing sin is his treatment of the guilt of sinful dreams. Some people would object that when we experience sinful dreams we cannot be held responsible and guilty for them because we cannot control our reason and will when we are not fully conscious. Rutherford responds in a clear and practical way: “Sinful dreams are counted our sins, because our vain minds in the day time run upon evil thoughts, and we are not careful by prayer and heavenly meditating to season our hearts with gear [material] which will bring holy dreams in their place.”112
The Difficulties of Christian Experience
Rutherford emphasizes that even the afflictions of Christian experience are to be seen in relation to Christ and traced to His gracious hand in the midst of our lives. The divine cordial of Romans 8:28 was very real to him: “I bless the Lord, that all our troubles come through Christ’s fingers, and that He casteth sugar among them, and casteth in some ounce-weights of heaven, and of the Spirit of glory that resteth on suffering believers, into our cup, in which there is no taste of hell.”113 Rutherford knew well the sorrows of affliction after the death of his first wife and after being deposed from his pulpit and exiled far from all godly friends. While he was engaged at the Westminster Assembly in London, two of his children died. He knew deeply by his own experience the wounds that affliction makes upon the inward spirit when he sought to counsel others. He writes, “Sorrow, loss, sadness, death, are the worst of things that are, except sin. But Christ knoweth well what to make of them, and can put His own in the cross’s common, so that we shall be obliged to affliction, and thank God who taught us to make our acquaintance with such a rough companion, who can hale [draw] us to Christ.”114 In another letter he comments, “I would not want the sweet experience of the consolations of God for all the bitterness of affliction.”115 Rutherford had a true spiritual joy in affliction. The New Testament teaches us in several passages that we should be glad in affliction because it has a precious outcome, and, in light of this, Rutherford emphasizes that “faith hath cause to take courage from our very afflictions; the devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints. I know that he but heweth and polisheth stones, all this time, for the New Jerusalem.”116
Trials in the church and nation are ordered by Christ’s hand for His own glory. He is both seeking out and preparing His bride. In the language of Zechariah 13:9, He is claiming “the third part” through the fires of affliction. “Yet the Lord’s third part shall come through the fire, as refined gold for the treasure of the Lord, and the outcasts of Scotland shall be gathered together again, and the wilderness shall blossom as the flower, and bud, and grow as the rose of Sharon; and great shall be the glory of the Lord upon Scotland.”117 Rutherford believed in the importance of seeking to understand the dispensations of God in providence and that nothing was without its significance. “The condition of the people of God in the three kingdoms calleth for this, that we now wisely consider what the Lord is doing. There is a language of the Lord’s ‘fire in Zion,’ and ‘his furnace in Jerusalem,’ if we could understand the voice of the crying rod.”118
Rutherford knew sore trials both in church and state. When Cromwell defeated the Scots army resoundingly at Dunbar in 1650, Rutherford found it an extreme affliction: “I have suffered much,” he wrote, “but this is the thickest darkness…I have yet [known].”119 During the 1650s Cromwell proceeded to keep Scotland under his control, intervening in the affairs of the church, such as ordinations, and prohibiting general assemblies. Although invited to take up professorships at Edinburgh University and in Holland, Rutherford believed that his place was at St. Andrews, seeking to uphold the cause of Christ in Scotland.
During this time Rutherford also knew the heartbreak of a severe split that tore the Church of Scotland apart and kept him from the fellowship of true Christians. Christ’s most beloved ones and foremost servants are often the sorest afflicted and tried: The “lintel-stone and pillars of the New Jerusalem suffer more knocks of God’s hammer and tool than the common side-wall stones.”120 Rutherford believed it was necessary to defend the truth and not to give away one hair’s-breadth of it, but he lamented the sad effects of controversy and church divisions such as diminished spiritual appetite and fervor. As he observed in a polemic against Thomas Hooker’s congregationalism, “When the head is filled with topics and none of the flamings of Christ’s love in the heart, how dry are all disputes. For too often, fervor of dispute in the head weakens love in the heart. And what can our paper-industry add to the spotless truth of our Lord Jesus?”121
The Future of Christian Experience
Christian experience has a past, present, and future. When we remember “mercies, deliverances, rods, warnings…consolations…manifestations of God…experiences, answers from the Lord,” we may be “comforted now” concerning the Lord’s goodwill toward us, but also “confirmed in the certain hope, that grace, free grace, in a fixed and established Surety, shall perfect that good work in you.”122 All that we experience now makes us long all the more for the time when it will be possible to enjoy our God and Redeemer without sinning for all eternity. Rutherford expresses a yearning for that day: “O for eternity’s leisure to look on Him, to feast upon a sight of His face. O for the long summer-day of endless ages to stand beside Him and enjoy Him! O time, O sin, be removed out of the way. O day, O fairest of days, dawn! O morning of eternity, break out, and arise, that we may enjoy this incomprehensible Lord.”123 Rutherford realizes that at present, in the limitations of our sinful state, we cannot know the fullness of Christian experience and all that will be our portion in glory: “Would Christ in His fullness of the irradiations of His glory break in upon us, He should break the bodily organs, and over-master the soul’s faculties, that all the banks of the soul should be like broken walls, hedges or clay channels;…we must be both more capacious, and wider and stronger vessels, before we be made fit to contain glory.”124 Soon Rutherford was to enter into the fullness of what he had experienced in foretaste upon this earth.
When Charles II was restored to the throne of Great Britain in 1660, various prominent Covenanters were identified for punishment. The Committee of Estates in Scotland issued a declaration against Rutherford’s book Lex, Rex, which had been written in opposition to absolute monarchy, and copies of the book were burned in Edinburgh and outside New College in St. Andrews. Rutherford was deprived of his position in the university, his charge in the church, and his stipend, and he was confined to his own house. He was cited to appear before Parliament on a charge of treason, and his friends feared that he might well face execution in common with some of the other more prominent Covenanters. Early in 1661 Rutherford fell seriously ill, however. When the summons came in 1661, charging him with treason and demanding his appearance on a certain day, Rutherford answered from his deathbed, “I have got summons already before a superior Judge and Judicatory, and I behove to answer to my first summons, and ere your day come, I will be where few kings and great folks come.”125 His exhortations to the company of ministers that gathered around his deathbed could be taken as a summary of his own life. “My Lord and Master is chief of ten thousands of thousands. None is comparable to Him, in heaven or in earth. Dear brethren, do all for Him. Pray for Christ. Preach for Christ. Do all for Christ; beware of men-pleasing.” Before he died he said, “This night will close the door and fasten my anchor within the veil.” His last recorded words were, “Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s Land.”126 Rutherford writes longingly of eternal life with his Lord:
Oh, how sweet to be wholly Christ’s, and wholly in Christ! To be out of the creature’s owning and made complete in Christ! to live by faith in Christ and to be, once for all, clothed with the uncreated majesty and glory of the Son of God, wherein He maketh all His friends and followers sharers! To dwell in Immanuel’s high and blessed land, and live in that sweetest air where no wind bloweth but the breathings of the Holy Ghost, no seas or floods flow but the pure water of life that proceedeth from under the throne and from the Lamb! No planting but the Tree of Life that yieldeth twelve manner of fruits every month! What do we here but sin and suffer? Oh, when shall the night be gone, the shadows flee away and the morning of that long, long day without cloud or night, dawn?127
This was his greatest desire: “I would seek no more to make me happy for evermore, but a thorough and clear sight of the beauty of Jesus my Lord. Let my eyes enjoy His fairness, and stare Him forever in the face, and I have all that can be wished.”128 At the foot of the ruined wall of the cathedral of St. Andrews, Rutherford’s gravestone describes his passion for Christ and the fulfillment of his greatest desire:
True godliness adorned his name,
He did converse with things above,
Acquainted with Emmanuel’s love….
Mostly constantly he did contend
Until his time was at an end.
Then he won to the full fruition
Of that which he had seen in vision.129
1. As quoted in John Coffey, Politics, Religion, and the British Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 6.
2. John Macleod, Scottish Theology in Relation to Church History since the Reformation (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 68.
3. Preface, Letters of Samuel Rutherford, ed. A. A. Bonar (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1891), 725.
4. Power and Prevalency, xi–xii.
5. Letters, no. 199, 391.
6. Ibid., no. 345, 680.
7. Ibid., no. 186, 364.
8. Quaint Sermons, 251, 252.
9. Ibid., 353, 339.
10. Communion Sermons, 316.
11. Quaint Sermons, 92–93.
12. Robert Fleming, The Fulfilling of the Scripture (1669; repr., Edinburgh, 1845), I:10.
13. Quaint Sermons, 136–37.
14. Letters, no. 124, 249.
15. Sermon Preached…Commons (Edinburgh, 1644), 17, 23.
16. Letters, no. 234, 467.
17. Samuel Rutherford, Letters (1905), 5.
18. This is quite evident from the fact that on fast-day services one of the Westminster divines would be called upon to pray for an hour at a time. See Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, eds. A. F. Mitchell and J. Struthers (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1874).
19. Letters, 5.
20. Ibid., no. 277, 537.
21. Ibid., no. 279, 540–41.
22. Cf. ibid., no. 144, 275.
23. Power and Prevalency, 24.
24. Influences, 421–22.
25. Quaint Sermons, 134.
26. Influences, 312.
27. Catechism, 64.
28. Ibid., 63.
29. Communion Sermons, 259.
30. Trial and Triumph, 66–67.
31. Power and Prevalency, 39.
32. Ibid., 68–73.
33. Ibid., 115.
34. Ibid., 117.
35. Catechism, 16.
36. Free Disputation, 9.
37. Catechism, 18.
38. Free Disputation, 1.
39. Ibid., 5.
40. Ibid., 10.
41. Ibid., 19.
42. Letters, no. 180, 347.
43. Ibid., no. 179, 341.
44. Ibid., no. 177, 336.
45. Christ Dying, 27–28.
46. Letters, no. 69, 148.
47. Ibid., no. 179, 342.
48. Ibid., no. 14, 58.
49. Power and Prevalency, 61.
50. Ibid., 75.
51. Letters, no. 212, 415.
52. Letters, no. 104, 215.
53. Communion Sermons, 316.
54. Ibid., 38; Covenant of Life, 151.
55. Sermon Preached…Commons, 23.
56. Letters, no. 147, 278.
57. Trial and Triumph, 265.
58. Covenant of Life, 142.
59. Letters, no. 178, 339.
60. Ibid., no. 69, 149.
61. Ibid., no. 178, 338.
62. Covenant of Life, 307–308.
63. Power and Prevalency, 61.
64. Christ Dying, 50.
65. Ibid., 27–28.
66. Ibid., 261.
67. Quaint Sermons, 98.
68. Trial and Triumph, 156.
69. Catechism, 71.
70. Ibid.
71. Letters, no. 105, 218.
72. Sermon Preached…Commons, 14–15.
73. Letters, no. 342, 675; Trial and Triumph, 156.
74. Christ Dying, 49–50.
75. Letters, no. 28, 88.
76. Influences, A.
77. Ibid., 5.
78. Ibid., 1.
79. Ibid., 55, 64–65.
80. Power and Prevalency, 60.
81. Influences, 381.
82. Ibid., 408–409.
83. Ibid., 96.
84. Ibid., 96–97, 373–75.
85. Ibid., 301.
86. Ibid., 248.
87. Sermon Preached…Commons, 5–6.
88. As quoted in John Gillies, Historical Collections of Accounts of Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1981), 201.
89. Letters, no. 308, 615.
90. Sermon Preached…Commons, 5–6.
91. The Subordinate Standards and Other Authoritative Documents of the Free Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1973), 224–26.
92. Cornelius Burges, The First Sermon Preached to the House of Commons (London, 1641), 25.
93. In Anthology of Presbyterian and Reformed Literature, C. Coldwell, ed. (Dallas: Naphtali Press, 1992), 5:65.
94. Ibid., 77.
95. Letters, no. 116, 235. To Alexander Gordon of Earlston he writes, “Ye are the first man in Galloway called out and questioned for the name of Jesus…. Howbeit body, life, and goods go for Christ your Lord, and though ye should lose the head for Him” (ibid., no. 59, 133).
96. Ibid., no. 128, 253.
97. Ibid., no. 35, 98.
98. Catechism, 62–63.
99. Ibid., 29.
100. Trial and Triumph, 34.
101. Letters, no. 190, 374.
102. Covenant of Life, 155.
103. Christ Dying, 85.
104. Catechism, 70.
105. Influences, 150.
106. Letters, no. 286, 563.
107. Ibid., 84.
108. Ibid., 81.
109. Catechism, 56–57.
110. Ibid., 56.
111. Ibid., 99–100.
112. Ibid., 99.
113. Letters, no. 265, 516.
114. Ibid., no. 122, 246.
115. Ibid., no. 11, 52.
116. Ibid., no. 114, 231.
117. Ibid., no. 176, 333.
118. Trial and Triumph, 7.
119. Letters, no. 330, 653.
120. Ibid., no. 112, 228.
121. Samuel Rutherford, A Survey of the Survey of that Summe of Church Discipline penned by Mr Thomas Hooker (London: Printed by J. G. for Andr. Crook, 1658), sig. A2.
122. Letters, no. 341, 674.
123. Sermon Preached…Commons (Edinburgh, 1644), 46.
124. Christ Dying, 45.
125. Rutherford, Letters (1905), 38.
126. Letters, 21–22.
127. Ibid., no. 333, 661–62.
128. Ibid., no. 202, 398.
129. T. Campbell, Standing Witnesses: A Guide to the Scottish Covenanters and Their Memorials with a Historical Introduction (Edinburgh: Saltire Society, 1996), 169. The full text of the epitaph is recorded here.