Covenanters > Martyrs and Covenanters of Scotland

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BLAIR, RUTHERFORD,
had two quick eyes; and when he walked, it
was observed that lie held aye his face upward.
He had a strange utterance in the pulpit, a
kind of skreigh that I never heard the like.
Many times I thought he would have flown
out of the pulpit, when he came to speak of
Jesus Christhe was never in his right ele¬
ment but when he was commending Him.
He would have fallen asleep in bed speaking
of Christ.” Rutherford was a stanch Protest¬
er; but controversy, though he excelled in it,
seemed to be alien to his nature. “ One day,
when preaching in Edinburgh, after dwelling
for some time on the differences of the day, he
broke out with—‘Woe is unto us for these sad
divisions, that make us lose the fair scent of
the Rose of Sharon!’ and then he went on
commending Christ, going over all his precious
styles and titles about a quarter of an hour;
upon which the laird of Glanderston said, in a
loud whisper, ‘Aye, now you are right-—hold you
there.’ ” Rutherford died in 1661, shortly after
his book called Lex Rex was burnt by the
hangman at Edinburgh, and at the gates of
the New College of St. Andrews, where he was
regent and professor of divinity.* He departed
* “ It was much easier to burn the book than to answer it,”
says Wodrow. When Charles II. read Lex Rex, he said,
with his native shrewdness, that it would scarcely ever get
an answer; and his words have proved true.