Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
I have begun re-reading Lex, Rex this Sabbath, and came across the below comment in the preface. He seems to be responding to John Maxwell's claim that Presbyterianism necessarily leads to lawless acts of violence, such as the riot at St Giles' in 1637; to which Rutherford replies:
36. The killing of the monstrous and prodigious wicked cardinal in the Castle of St Andrews, and the violence done to the prelates, who against all law of God and man, obtruded a mass service upon their own private motion, in Edinburgh anno 1637, can conclude nothing against presbyterial government except our doctrine commend these acts as lawful.
Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex; or, the law and the prince (1644; Edinburgh, 1843), xxiii.
Is Rutherford saying that the Scottish Presbyterian clergy did not approve of the riot as lawful behaviour or is this reading too much into the above extract?
36. The killing of the monstrous and prodigious wicked cardinal in the Castle of St Andrews, and the violence done to the prelates, who against all law of God and man, obtruded a mass service upon their own private motion, in Edinburgh anno 1637, can conclude nothing against presbyterial government except our doctrine commend these acts as lawful.
Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex; or, the law and the prince (1644; Edinburgh, 1843), xxiii.
Is Rutherford saying that the Scottish Presbyterian clergy did not approve of the riot as lawful behaviour or is this reading too much into the above extract?