Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600–1661) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and theologian. Educated at Edinburgh, he was minister of Anwoth in Galloway from 1627 until, in 1636, he was banished to Aberdeen for his opposition to the bishops; the letters he wrote from exile to his parishioners and friends became a classic of devotion after their publication in 1664. Restored in 1638, he became professor of divinity and later principal of St. Mary's College at St. Andrews, and sat as one of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. His Lex, Rex (1644), a defense of limited monarchy, was burned at the Restoration, and he died while under summons for treason.