Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford 1600–1661, Scottish clergyman. His Exercitationes apologeticae pro divina gratia (1636), urging a Calvinist view of grace against Arminianism (see under Arminius, Jacobus ), caused his suspension from his living at Anwoth on the charge of nonconformity to the Acts of Episcopacy. Banished to Aberdeen until the National Covenant was drawn up in 1638, he then was made professor of divinity at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, and rector of the university in 1651. In 1643 he was chosen a commissioner from Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, and was attacked by name in John Milton's sonnet "On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament." His Lex Rex (1644) brought him wide attention as a political theorist; it was burned by the public hangman after the Restoration, and Rutherford was removed from his official positions and summoned (1661) by Parliament on a charge of treason. He died before he could be tried. Rutherford's letters, first published as Joshua Redivivus (1664), edited by A. A. Bonar with a life (2 vol., 1863), have passed through a number of editions.

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Rutherford, Samuel

Rutherford, Samuel (c.1600–61), Scottish Presbyterian minister. In 1639 he became professor of divinity at St Mary's College, St Andrews, and in 1647 principal. He was one of the Scottish Commissioners at the Westminster Assembly in 1643. His Lex Rex (1644), attacking monarchical absolutism, brought him repute as a constitutional theorist; it was publicly burnt at the Restoration (1660). In A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (1649) he defended religious persecution on the ground that advocacy of toleration put conscience in the place of God and the Bible.

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E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Rutherford, Samuel." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 26 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Rutherford, Samuel." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (May 26, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-RutherfordSamuel.html

E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Rutherford, Samuel." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Retrieved May 26, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O95-RutherfordSamuel.html

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