RUTHERFURD or RUTHERFORD, SAMUEL (c. 1600-1661), Scottish divine, was born at Nisbet, Roxburghshire, and studied at Edinburgh, where he became professor of the humanities in 1623. He was dismissed in 1626 for an alleged in discretion before his marriage, but in 1627 became minister of Anwoth, Kircudbrightshire. He was prosecuted by the bishop, Sydserf, in 1636, on account of the severe Calvinism of his first book, Exercitationes, Apologeticae pro Divina Gratia (Amsterdam, 1636), and sentenced to confinement in Aberdeen. Most of his famous Letters belong to this period of banishment. At the Glasgow assembly of 1638 he was restored to his parish. In 1639 he became professor of divinity at St. Mary's college, St. Andrews, and in 1643 was sent to London as one of the eight Scottish commissioners to the Westminster assembly. His Lex Rex, a Dispute for the Just Prerogative of King and People (1644) gives him a recognized place among the early writers on constitutional law. In 1647 he became principal of the New
college at St. Andrews. After the Restoration in 166o his Lex Rex was ordered to be burnt. He was deprived of his office and charged with high treason. His health broke down, and after drawing up a Testimony (Feb. 26, 1661, posthumously published), he died on March 23, 1661.
Rutherford's Letters, first published in 1664, anonymously, by M. Ward, an amanuensis, as Joshua Redivivus, or Mr. Rather foord's Letters, have frequently been reprinted. The best edi tion (365 letters) is by Rev. A. A. Bonar (1848, with a sketch of his life).
See also a short Life by Rev. Dr. Andrew Thomson (1884) ; Dr. A. B. Grosart in Representative Nonconformists; Dr. Alexander Whyte, Samuel Rutherford and some of his Correspondents (1894) ; Rev. R. Gilmour, Samuel Rutherford (1904) •