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Introduction to Samuel Rutherford's The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644)

Sherman Isbell

In the last decade of the twentieth century, Presbyterians in North America are increasingly losing touch with their historical roots in British Puritan worship and Presbyterian polity. With cross-fertilization going on from Southern Baptist methodology in missions, and with church administration being adapted to models from corporate business, American Presbyterians are fast surrendering their confidence that Holy Scripture prescribes the particulars of church order or worship forms.

Samuel Rutherford's writings on church government represent a very different assessment of what can be demonstrated from the Scriptures. Rutherford's survey of the biblical revelation shows what can be demonstrated from the Word of God about acceptable worship, and claims a divine mandate for the characteristic features of Presbyterian church order. And Rutherford was not alone. His conviction represents the persuasion of the Westminster Assembly that its literary productions were statements of biblical truth supported by massive exegetical work carried out in the Reformed community of churches.

Rutherford was born in 1600. In 1638, he was designated professor of divinity at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews, in his native Scotland. Rutherford was in London from 1643 to 1647 as one of the commissioners from the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly. The Scottish commissioners sat with the committees responsible for drafting the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, the Presbyterial Form of Church Government, and the Directory of Public Worship. Rutherford was active in this work, and remained at the Assembly longer than most of his countrymen. Upon returning to Scotland he resumed his teaching responsibilities in St. Andrews, and in 1651 was made rector of the University. He died there in 1661.

Rutherford's first treatise on church government was published in 1642, before he was sent to the Westminster Assembly. In A Peaceable and Temperate Plea for Paul's Presbyterie in Scotland, Rutherford reviews in short compass the theories of the Congregationalists and Separatists. When the Scottish commissioners were exposed to the plethora of new ideas circulating in London during the time of the Assembly, they responded with a reasoned defence of Presbyterian and Reformed practice. This is the setting for the publication of Rutherford's The Due Right of Presbyteries, in London in 1644.

Many aspects of the doctrine of the church had come into controversy. We shall examine each of the major issues in turn, as they are treated in The Due Right of Presbyteries. An asterisk will be used to indicate the pages from the second half of the book, as the pagination there is not continuous with the first part of the volume. Because of occasional repetition in the pagination, we have sometimes identified references by means of a signature (the figures and letters at the bottom of the first and third pages of the eight-page sections); the passage will be on that page or the next.

Church Membership

What is it that fits a man for entrance into the visible church? The Congregationalists wished the evidences of regeneration to be as clear as the judgment of discerning men could attain to (p. 251). They saw the church as made up of those who, being regenerate, could credibly pledge that they would walk in holiness and discharge their responsibilities to the saints. The Scottish Presbyterians argued that baptism, profession of faith, a willingness to hear the preaching, and a life free of scandals were all that were required for membership in the visible church (pp. 242-244, 251, 253-254, 267-268 sig. Ii4, 286). There will be hypocrites within the church (pp. 264-267 sig. Ii2-4, 262-264 sig. Kk2-3, 277, 419, 201*), and men may be added lawfully to the church visible although God has not added them to the church invisible (pp. 260-261 sig. Kk1-2, 266 sig. Kk4, 185-186*). In this connection, Rutherford reminds us that the church's responsibility in this matter rests upon the revealed will of God, rather than upon his secret will (pp. 268-264 sig. Ii4 to Kk3).

The church visible is like a draw net, a workhouse of external calling (pp. 254, 262 sig. Kk2, 201-203*, 250*). Rather than having in attendance only those who are already converted, the church visible is a place where hearers of the Word are brought under the care of pastors, and afterwards are converted. This is why baptized infants are in the society of the visible church (pp. 92, 102, 111, 127-128, 210-211*), and why baptism should be extended even to the children of the excommunicated, and of wicked parents whose forebears were professed Christians (pp. 256*, 258-267*).

The Separatist theory entailed a visible church in which the saving grace of God had been received by all the membership. The church visible was to be made up of those in whose lives the blessings of the covenant of grace had become a spiritual reality. Rutherford identifies this as the crux of the difference between the Separatists and the Presbyterians (pp. 242, 244-245, 249-251, 277-278, 231-232*, 248*), complaining that his opponents take the privileges and promises proper to the invisible church and give all these to the visible church (pp. 249-250). Rutherford teaches that although the church visible exists as a ministerial and governing society in which the covenant is preached to all (pp. 248, 256-257, 270-271), yet the promises of the covenant of grace are given effectually to the church invisible alone (pp. 9, 242, 244-251, 259 sig. Kk1, 188*, 329*), and the keys are given to church guides for the edification of the elect (pp. 9- 10, 18-20, 248-249, 265-266 sig. Ii3).

In Christ's parable of the tares and the wheat, Rutherford understands the field to be the visible church, in which the seed of the Word is sown (pp. 263 sig. Ii2, 264 sig. Kk3, 360*). Rutherford envisages a church with many unconverted persons sitting under the preaching, and to such congregations the Puritans delivered searching sermons striking at the conscience. They preached against sin, invited men to come to Christ, and explained what were the distinguishing marks of a work of grace in an individual. The church visible is a company of the externally called, and being attached to it is a way of salvation (pp. 261-262 sig. Ii1). Even the excommunicated are still to come and hear the Word preached (pp. 273-275), and therefore they share the true church communion of regular hearers of the Word (pp. 268-273 sig. Ll1-4, 281-282). Rutherford points out the resemblance between the Separatist theory and the pure church sought by the Anabaptists (pp. 245, 253, 261 sig. Ii1, 263 sig. Ii2, 268 sig. Ii4, 277, 244*).

The Congregationalists required a sworn church covenant to constitute a visible church, the saints pledging themselves to carry out the obligations of mutual care of one another. Rutherford rejected this device of the Congregationalists as an undue narrowing of the church (pp. 83-130). He pointed out that the visible church is entered by baptism rather than by this voluntary vow (pp. 109, 125, 128, 198*, 214-215*, 218-219*), and that there is no need of express covenants among men for carrying out obligations which are established through divine commandments (pp. 96-97, 108). Membership vows are permissible, but are not required (pp. 85-86, 97). God's covenant of grace is not with a particular congregation, nor with individual men, but with Christ, and in him with all his seed (pp. 97, 102, 192*, 329*).

The real value of the Biblical texts about the swearing of covenants is to demonstrate the propriety of a church subscribing to a confession of faith (pp. 133-134). Confessions of faith are useful for asserting a sound hermeneutic and excluding false interpretations of the Scripture, and as a means for teachers in the church to preserve unity among themselves (pp. 130-131). Subscription to a confession of faith ought also to remedy backsliding, and prevent heresy (pp. 135-136). It represents a church's steadfastness in the face of claims that there can be no certainty in matters about which men have differed (pp. 138-139).

Separation from the Visible Church

To establish their purer churches, the Separatists called for a forsaking of the national Church of England in favor of congregations of visible saints (p. 73). Churches were to be assemblies of the regenerate, gathered from among the parish population. Rutherford discerned that this would mean that the conversion of souls was to take place outside the visible church. In opposition, he contended that it is the function of the church's ministers to gather sinners to Christ (pp. 175-178, 216*, 279*). The public preaching of pastors is the ordinary means blessed of God for conversion (pp. 97, 268*, 272*). In Rutherford's estimation, the Separatists viewed the conversion of souls as a work of charity done by private Christians not in office, and the unconverted as not belonging under pastoral care (pp. 97, 100, 194, 254, 288, 273*): only after conversion would men be fit to enter the visible church. Rutherford astutely observed that this manner of gathering churches will enlarge the number of congregations, but does not show how to convert sinners to Christ or how to enlarge the visible church (pp. 349-350*).

In this connection, Rutherford discussed legitimate grounds for separation from existing churches. It is lawful to go and dwell in a congregation where Christ is worshiped in all his ordinances rather than remain where he is not, and where church censures are neglected. For this is not separation from the visible church, but only removing from one part of it to another (p. 73). Thus it is one thing to remove from one congregation of the visible church to another, but quite another to separate from it as if it were a false church, and this is what the Separatists were doing (pp. 71-72). For this reason, Rutherford compares departure from the Separatist congregations with the justifiable withdrawal of the faithful from the Donatists in the days of Augustine, though he grants that the Separatist churches are true visible churches (p. 253*).

Rutherford teaches that even if scandal is tolerated in a church, participation in the church's sound worship is not wrong (pp. 67, 193-194*): sometimes even ministers are not able to resolve the problems. Discipline is not necessary for the essence of a visible church (pp. 109-110, 287-288), and the sinful life of some who join in an act of worship does not make the worship unlawful for others (pp. 233-245*, 249*, 251-255*). Though the church at Corinth was commanded to separate the incestuous person from the church, it does not follow that the people were to separate from the public worship if the man was not cast out (pp. 240*, 327*). The Separatists objected that it is forbidden to hold communion not only with evil works, but also with evil persons, and Rutherford responded that we should separate from the public worship only when the worship is unlawful (pp. 238-239*).

Rutherford acknowledged that the Lutheran church is a true visible church, though its images are idolatry (pp. 230-231*, 253*). He distinguished grounds sufficient for not uniting with a church from the graver causes required for separating from a church (pp. 254-255*). We may also separate from an act of worship, as when the bread at the Supper is adored, or from baptism when the sign of the cross is added, and yet continue in a church to hear the Word preached and to espouse the church's sound doctrine (p. 254*).

Rutherford granted that we should separate from churches that by consequence undermine the fundamentals of the faith; in particular, the Church of Rome by its doctrine and practice has vitiated the offices of Christ as prophet, priest and king (pp. 229-230*, 242*). Rutherford concedes that Rome has something of the ministerial form of a church (pp. 287, 230*), and therefore its ordination and baptism are valid (pp. 186-187, 201, 207-229, 237-241, 265-266 sig. Kk4, 286-287), but the degree of its corruption requires that its communion be forsaken (pp. 59, 240).

Another primary point of contention came with the Congregationalist claim that there is no visible church in the New Testament except particular congregations (p. 8). Rutherford denied that the essence of the visible church lies in everyone being able to come together in one place for worship (pp. 56-57, 303). Instead, every particular congregation is a part of the universal visible church (pp. 293-295, 418-419), and an appropriate expression of this communion among churches is their subjection to a common government by synods (pp. 300-301).

In asserting this communion among many churches, Rutherford argues from the propriety of pastors exercising their ministerial functions in congregations other than the one to which they are tied (pp. 127, 186-187*, 325*, 348-351*). He contends that because communion among churches is abolished if members of one congregation are not received to the Lord's table in another (pp. 197, 201*), churches should likewise be associated in acts of church discipline (pp. 77, 194-196*, 324-327*). Christ gave the ordinances, the ministry, and church jurisdiction to the whole visible church rather than to a single congregation (pp. 289-308, 383-386). Excommunication is therefore a casting out from the universal visible church, and belongs to the joint action of churches (pp. 74-77, 295-298, 187-188*). Much as did the Westminster Assembly in its Presbyterial Form of Church Government, Rutherford argues that the church in Jerusalem and the churches Paul wrote to were in each case a presbytery made up of congregations meeting in many houses (pp. 425-446, 457-476). Many congregations united under one visible government makes them one visible church (p. 53), and this fellowship of church communion ought ideally to extend to all the visible churches on earth (pp. 57-59, 416-418). "Thus it is cleare that our brethren deny all communion of Churches, while they confine a visible Church to one onely single and independent Congregation, subjected in its visible government to Christ Jesus immediatly, and to no universall visible Church or Synod on earth" (p. 351*).

Rutherford sees in the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 a mandate for government by church synods (pp. 58-59, 355-379, 404- 409*). Such synods have powers of censure (pp. 388-390, 396-398, 404), and jurisdiction in appeals from a lower church court to a higher (p. 450*), for Scripture allows various levels of government by elder assemblies (pp. 331-334*). The decrees of church synods are binding acts of church authority (pp. 365-370, 373- 376, 380-406, 414-418, 330-346*), providing a remedy when many churches are perverted (pp. 356-358).

Government by Church Officers

Even at the congregational level, the Separatists diminished the diversity between the rulers and the ruled, arguing that all the powers of church government are originally vested with the multitude of believers, who convey church authority to the eldership by means of an election to office (pp. 20-33, 300, 477-482, 311-312*, 322-323*). Rutherford replies that Christ has appointed the offices and officers in his house, and has conveyed the power of the keys of the kingdom to the eldership immediately, without the intervening power of men (pp. 7, 9-19, 176-180, 189- 200, 289-291, 311-313*). To this end Rutherford carefully distinguishes between election, by which the church calls men to office (pp. 201-202), and ordination, which is an exercise of church authority, and is performed by the eldership (pp. 198-201, 205, 491-497, 314*).

Rutherford argued that passages such as Matthew 18:17 speak of a representative church of the governing eldership, which performs such ministerial church actions as discipline and ordination (pp. 13-19, 35-40, 195-196, 312-325, 489-491). The foment of the English Civil War occasioned much debate about a more democratic civil government. But Rutherford observes that civil power is founded in the law of nature, and to assign the power of church government to all professing believers is an unwarranted appeal to the natural sphere of civil incorporations. Christ in his kingdom makes a supernatural communication of ministerial power directly to the eldership (pp. 20-21, 200). Rutherford charged the Separatists with holding to a mere popular government in the church, such as was notoriously advocated by the Parisian Jean Morely (pp. 22, 481, 311-312*).

The Separatists made pastoral care and government to be accidental to the church (pp. 22, 53, 178-181), while Rutherford by contrast denies that believers meeting without elders are an instituted church (pp. 3-4), and says that officers are the means leading to the planting of a church (pp. 176-177, 180-181, 192). The Separatist meetings also leveled the distinction between the multitude and the eldership by giving opportunity for all gifted men to engage in preaching, regardless of whether they were ordained to office (pp. 271-273*). Rutherford said that Christ's ambassadors were to have more than the bare gift to preach; there was to be an official and authoritative sending, which is reflected in a man's ordination to office (pp. 269-270*, 272-280*, 292-303*, 306-308*).

In the application of the regulative principle to church polity, Rutherford asserts that Scripture tells us what officers are to be in the church (pp. 158-159, 279*), and that the exercise of the keys by church officers must be in accordance with the precise rule and prescription of the Word (pp. 311*). Extensive guidance is given to us in the Pastoral Epistles in particular (pp. 497, 319*, 425-426*). In seeking a biblical model for church order, the example of the apostles is a sufficient warrant for our practice, without a further word of institution (p. 454 sig. Kkk2). Rutherford notes that in following apostolic practice, it is necessary to take into account that the New Testament church bore with the Jewish ceremonies during an interim of forty years, in order to avoid scandal. These ceremonies are not indifferent now, and may not be practiced (pp. 65, 407, 413, 430, 368*, 377*). Rutherford discusses the biblical warrant for the offices of elder (pp. 141-156, 319*) and deacon (pp. 157, 159-172), and observes that there is room for both the deacon and the civil magistrate to be involved in the care of the poor (pp. 161-163).

The Civil Magistrate and Religion

Some of the Separatists objected to a society in which the civil magistrate curbed religious diversity. The plea was that faith cannot be compelled by the magistrate (p. 352*). Rutherford allows that magistrates cannot compel internal acts of faith, but defends the propriety of a civil restraint on the public practice of false worship (pp. 354-355*). It is no valid objection that a forced external conformity often leaves citizens hypocrites, for the magistrate's function is not to create a willing heart or a persuaded conscience (p. 352*). In a similar way, the magistrate must compel subjects to abstain from murder, even though their compliance with the law is out of fear of the magistrate, and not from love of neighbor or fear of God (p. 355*).

Rutherford gave little heed to pleas that men just be left free to act according to conscience. Conscience, he wrote, is not any ultimate rule of man's obedience, for that would displace the Word of God (p. 382*). God has not given to conscience any authority to oblige a man to sin (p. 380*), and when conscience makes false representations as to what duty requires, conscience is no longer God's obedient deputy (pp. 380-381*). To suffer for lies under the delusion that they are divine truth is not righteousness, but sinful credulity and blind zeal (p. 381*).

The king should use the sword to promote not just the external peace of society, and natural happiness, but honesty, godliness and public worship (pp. 388*, 393-395*, 397*, 399-402*, 446*). Indeed the king and the church command and forbid the same things, for the care of the things of God belongs to the king as well as the church (pp. 396-397*); both powers seek to procure the same good, but in different ways (pp. 394-396*). The king has no power to make church laws (pp. 387*, 389-392*, 403- 424*, 437-444*), and neither is the government of the church in his hands (pp. 424-437*). Yet sins censurable by the church should receive a punishment from the civil magistrate as well (p. 363*). The magistrate is not to be an indifferent spectator of men's religion, but in a Christian commonwealth is to be a nurse father of Christ's church (pp. 395-397*, 413-414*, 417*, 446*), preserving and promoting obedience to the two tables of the law (pp. 354*, 395-398*, 402*, 413*, 431*, 442*, 446*, 448*).

King and church are two coordinate institutions, and two parallel supreme powers on earth: "As the Church hath no politick power at all, so hath the Church no politick power above the King; but he is the onely supreme power on earth immediate under God; so the King hath no power formally and intrinsecally ecclesiasticall over either the Church, or any member of the Church, but the Churches power is supreme under Christ the King and head of the Church" (p. 407*). The civil magistrate is a moral agent, subject to church discipline for sins which he commits in the discharge of his office, just as the ministers of the church are under the power of the king's sword for their offences in office (pp. 399-400*).

A heathen nation which has never heard the gospel is not to be brought to true worship by the sword; in such a case the nation should be left to receive the gospel by the church's mission in preaching, though in the meantime the magistrate may suppress blasphemy (pp. 352-354*, 361*, 363*). However, a magistrate may require a nation that has embraced the faith to profess the truth which they have sworn in baptism (p. 354*), and there should be civil punishments for seducers and apostates to a different religion (p. 356*). The church goes before in teaching, defining and prescribing moral obligation, and the civil sanction is added as an auxiliary supplement in a Christian society (pp. 355-356*, 407*, 411*, 413-416*, 448*).

The care of God's church by the kings of Israel is a moral pattern to magistrates today (pp. 356*, 412*), and the infliction of capital punishment upon seducing heretics is of permanent obligation (pp. 356-357*). However, God has not prescribed the Old Testament judicial law to the Christian state as he did to the Jewish state (pp. 69-70, 240*, 379*). At the height of the Westminster Assembly's debate, Rutherford penned yet another comprehensive discussion of the biblical foundations of Presbyterian worship and polity, The Divine Right of Church-Government and Excommunication (London 1646); there Rutherford explains that civil punishment of a sin against the moral law is a perpetual duty of the magistrate, but the specific penalties of the judicial law are no longer obligatory (pp. 493-494): "But sure Erastus erreth, who will have all such to be killed by the Magistrate under the New Testament, because they were killed in the Old: Then are we to stone the men that gathereth sticks on the Lords day; the childe that is stubborn to his Parents, the Virgins, daughters of Ministers that committeth fornication are to be put to death. Why, but then the whole judiciall Law of God shall oblige us Christians as Carolostadius and others teach? I humbly conceive that the putting of some to death in the Old Testament, as it was a punishment to them, so was it a mysterious teaching of us, how God hated such and such sins, and mysteries of that kinde are gone with other shadows.

"But we read not, (saith Erastus) where Christ hath changed those Laws in the New Testament. It is true, Christ hath not said in particular, I abolish the debarring of the leper seven dayes, and he that is thus and thus unclean shall be separated till the evening; nor hath he said particularly of every carnall Ordinance and judiciall Law, it is abolished. But we conceive, the whole bulk of the judiciall Law, as judiciall, and as it concerned the Republick of the Jews only, is abolished; also some punishments were meerly Symbolicall, to teach the detestation of such a vice, as the boaring with an Aule the ear of him that loved his Master, and desired still to serve him, and the making of him his perpetuall servant. I should think the punishing with death the man that gathered sticks on the Sabbath was such; and in all these, the punishing of a sin against the Morall Law by the Magistrate, is Morall and perpetuall; but the punishing of every sin against the Morall Law, tali modo, so and so, with death, with spitting on the face: I much doubt if these punishments in particular, and in their positive determination to the people of the Jews, be morall and perpetuall As he that would marry a captive woman of another Religion, is to cause her first pare her nailes, and wash herself, and give her a moneth, or lesse time to lament the death of her Parents, which was a Judiciall, not a Ceremoniall Law; that this should be perpetuall, because Christ in particular hath not abolished it, to me seems most unjust; for as Paul saith, He that is Circumcised becomes debter to the whole Law, sure to all the Ceremonies of Moses his Law: So I argue, a pari, from the like, He that will keep one judiciall Law, because Judiciall and given by Moses, becometh debter to keep the whole judiciall Law, under pain of Gods eternall wrath."

These views are a background to the resolution which the Westminster Assembly passed on March 26, 1646, during its debate on Christian liberty and liberty of conscience, in which they defined "The liberty which Christ hath purchased by His death." Such liberty "under the gospel consists, especially in freedom from the guilt and power of sin, from bondage to Satan, from the condemning wrath of God, from the ceremonial and judicial law, and from the curse of the moral" (Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly, edited by A.F. Mitchell and J. Struthers, p. 211).

The Literature of the Controversy

The Due Right of Presbyteries is an examination of John Cotton's The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, which was then circulating in England in manuscript, but was printed in London in 1645, the year after Rutherford published his reply. Cotton (1585-1652) is the adversary whom Rutherford styles "our Author." Rutherford commonly reproduces a paragraph from his opponent's book, and then supplies an answer to it. Rutherford also replies to a volume entitled Church-Government and Church-Covenant Discussed, which was published at London in 1643. It comprises answers by John Davenport (1597-1670) and Richard Mather (1596-1669) of New England to concerns expressed by many ministers in England about the congregationalist church order of New England; in addition, Church-Government and Church-Covenant Discussed contains Mather's An Apology of the Churches in New England for Church-Covenant, in answer to Richard Bernard (1568-1641). In 1644, Mather and William Tompson (1598-1666) issued their Modest and Brotherly Answer to Mr. Charles Herle his Book, against the Independency of Churches. Herle (1598-1659) was a prominent member of the Westminster Assembly, becoming prolocutor of the Assembly in 1646. These are the New England writings Rutherford was responding to. More radical than the Congregationalist ministers of New England were the Separatists, and Rutherford often expresses disagreement with John Robinson (1575-1625), whose seminal Justification of Separation from the Church of England (1610), and The People's Plea for the Exercise of Prophesie (1618), were reissued in 1639 and 1641 respectively.

Rutherford's The Due Right of Presbyteries drew an answer from the New England ministers. Mather penned A Reply to Mr. Rutherford, or, A Defence of the Answer to Reverend Mr. Herles Booke (London 1647). Cotton in 1648 published The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, in which he responds both to Rutherford, and to another of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly, Robert Baillie (1599-1662), whose A Dissuasive from the Errours of our Time appeared in 1645. Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) reviewed Rutherford's arguments in A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline (London 1648), and Rutherford responded to Hooker with A Survey of the Survey of that Summe of Church Discipline (London 1658).

Some criticisms of Rutherford's views by later Scottish Presbyterians should be noted. Writing about 1704, Thomas Boston (1676-1732) made the case for a narrower view of whose children have a right to baptism. Boston's reflections were posthumously published in 1753 in his Miscellany Questions, and may be read in his Whole Works, edited by Samuel M'Millan, vol. 6, pp. 125-220. Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835) and William Cunningham (1805-1861) distanced themselves from the suppression of religious diversity by the civil magistrate, while continuing to espouse the responsiblity of the civil rulers to aim at the promotion of true religion and the prosperity of the church of Christ. Their criticism of Rutherford may be seen in M'Crie's "Brief View of the Evidence for the Exercise of Civil Authority About Religion," and "On Liberty of Conscience," in Statement of the Difference (especially pp. 147-50 and 158-166 in the 1871 edition), and in Cunningham's "The Civil Magistrate and Religion," in Historical Theology, vol. 2, pp. 557-569.