Scottish Presbyterian Piety: Samuel Rutherford and the Literature of Civil War-era Puritanism

Abstract

This essay seeks to broaden our understanding of the Civil Wars and Restoration era in the British Isles by close attention to the ideology of Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600-1661), the most important radical political theologian of the Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters and a major figure in Anglo-Scottish relations during this period, particularly due to his role as a Commissioner from the Scottish Kirk to the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Rutherford’s influence and impact on the seventeenth-century British Isles is demonstrated, ironically, in the virulence with which he was attacked as a champion of repressive intolerance by John Milton. As an ardent and vocal supporter of Scottish Presbyterian ecclesiology and Calvinist soteriology, Rutherford was one of the leading enemies of toleration of the sects by the English Puritan Parliamentarians, the Scots Covenanters’ erstwhile allies. Rutherford believed that the English Puritans, such as Cromwell and Milton, were bound by their oaths in support of the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant to impose a Scottish Presbyterian-style National Church Establishment on England, and indeed their sister Kingdom of Ireland. The Scottish Covenanters thought that the English Independents had committed a heinous betrayal of their sacred obligations to their allies and, most importantly, to God, by tolerating heresy. Milton’s assault on Rutherford as the archetypal Scottish Presbyterian bigot, however, should not be allowed to obscure the crucial historical insights that we can gain from devoting genuine attention to his life and arguments. In fact, Rutherford’s last, post- humously published, piece of writing, his Testimony to the Covenanted Work of Reformation, is especially helpful for us in attempting to develop a more rounded and sympathetic comprehension of the profound upheavals and traumas experienced by all parts of the British Isles during the Civil Wars era.