Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/84

the one hand, and that unbending tyranny which presbytery has too often assumed on the other. In 1642, he received a call to the parish of West Oalder, which lie was not permitted to accept, though he seems to have been desirous of doing so. He was one of the commissioners from the general assembly of the church of Scotland to the Westminster assembly, where his services were acknowledged by all parties to have been of great importance. The other commissioners from the general assembly of the church of Scotland, were permitted to visit their native country by turns, and to report the progress which was made in the great work ; but Rutherford never quitted his post till his mission was accomplished. His wife (for he married the second time after entering upon his charge at St Andrews,) and all his family, seem to have accompanied him. Two of his children, apparently all that he then had, died while he was in London. He had also along with him as his amanuensis, Mr Robert M'Ward, afterwards minister of the Tron church, Glasgow, and who was banished for nonconformity at the Restoration. Mr Rutherford exerted himself to promote the common cause, not only in the assembly, but by means of the press, in a variety of publications, bearing the impress of great learning and research, combined with clear and comprehensive views of the subjects of which they treated. The first of these was the "Due right of Presbytery, or a Peaceable Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland," a work of great erudition, and which called forth a reply from Mr Mather of New England; one of the best books that has yet been produced on that side of the question. The same year he published " Lex Rex," a most rational reply to a piece of insane loyalty emitted by John Maxwell, the excommunicated bishop of Ross. Next year, 1645, he published " The Trial and Triumph of Faith," an admirable treatise of practical divinity; and, in 1646, "The Divine Right of Church Government, in opposition to the Erastians." In 1647, he published another excellent piece of practical theology, " Christ dying and drawing Sinners," which was followed next year, though he had then returned to Scotland, by a "Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist," written against Saltmarsh, Dee, Town, Crisp, Eaton, and the other Antinomians of that day. In 1649, he published at London a " Free Disputation against pretended Liberty of Conscience," particularly directed against the Independents. All of these productions are highly honourable to the talents of the author, and place his industry and fertility of mind in a singularly favourable point of view. Rutherford, in returning to the former scene of his professorial and pastoral labours, must have felt agreeably relieved from the business and the bustle of a popular assembly, and hoped, probably, that now he might rest in his lot. Far otherwise, however, was the case. He was, in January, 1649, at the recommendation of the commission of the general assembly, appointed principal of the New college, of which he was already professor of divinity; and not long after, he was elevated to the rectorship of the university. An attempt had also been made, in the general assembly of 1649, to have him removed to the university of Edinburgh, which, Baillie says, "was thought to be absurd, and so was laid aside." He had an invitation at the same time to the chair of divinity and Hebrew in the university of Hardewyrk in Holland, which he declined ; and on the 20th of May, 1651, he was elected to fill the divinity chair in the university of Utrecht This appointment was immediately transmitted to him by his brother, Mr James Rutherford, then an officer in the Dutch service, who, by the way fell into the power of an English cruiser, and was stripped of everything, and confined a prisoner in Leith, till he was, through the intervention of the States, set at liberty. As he had, in consequence of this disaster, nothing but a verbal invitation to offer, Rutherford refused to accept it. James Rutherford returned