Catholic Political Thought and Calvinist Ecclesiology in Samuel Rutherford's <i>Lex, Rex</i> (1644)

Abstract This article presents a significant reinterpretation of an essential text in Scottish (and British) political thought, Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex , by analyzing its relationship with Catholic scholasticism. While scholars have observed use authors, there has been no sustained analysis how Rutherford strategically applied this intellectual tradition to the religious and context British civil wars. Ideas about human liberty, law nations, popular sovereignty that were developed scholastics School Salamanca allowed defend limited monarchy fulfill ecclesiological purpose seventeenth-century Britain. He, majority his Covenanter contemporaries, believed jure divino presbyterianism: scripture mandated elders synods, not bishops, should rule church. To ensure presbyterian settlement, needed disprove royalist absolutists who claimed presbyterianism threatened absolute (the divinely ordained form government) limiting royal supremacy over By building on scholastic ideas, was able argue beings could change government required God. Ironically, make state safe for presbyterianism, resorted rather than those own confessional tradition. urges reconsideration only porosity traditional boundaries early modern thought but respective positions both Calvinism Catholicism shaping ideas underlying revolutions mid-seventeenth century.