Theologically United And Divided: The Political Covenantalism Of Samuel Rutherford And John Milton

By Andries Raath and Shaun de Freitas

[Andries Raath is Senior Professor in the Department of Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law, Faculty of Law, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Shaun de Freitas is Senior Lecturer in the same Department.]

I. Introduction

Puritanism in England and America (and Pietism, its counterpart on the European continent), was the last great movement within the institutional church to influence the development of Western law (and politics) in any fundamental sense.[1] Also, English Puritanism was the third great intellectual-social movement of the Reformation federalists, after Huldreich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich, and John Calvin in Geneva.[2] Despite its ultimate failure as a movement, Puritanism had a profound and lasting impact on the constitutional tradition in England, on the “new political science” of the political compact, and on the constitutional development of the United States. In certain respects it was the greatest of the three, particularly with regard to the political thought and the political ideas and movements to which it gave birth, of which the covenant was a central teaching.[3] The sixteenth-century Zurich and Geneva Reformations each provided a different emphasis regarding the covenant and the Christian community. It was especially the theologico-political covenantalism emanating from the Zurich Reformation that received attention in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritanism.[4] Samuel Rutherford and John Milton represent the apex of Puritan political thought, which commenced towards the middle of the sixteenth century, reached its peak in the middle of the seventeenth century, and receded after the Glorious Revolution.[5]

Rutherford’s Lex, Rexis one of the most comprehensive expressions of Calvinistic political theory, and is also one of the keystones in the development of modern political theory.[6] Central to Rutherford’s political theory was the biblical covenant, the pact between God and the community as well as the contract between the ruler and the ruled. This was in agreement with the Zurich postulation of the covenant, which expresses the relationship between God and his people in terms of a personal bond.[7]

The Zurich concept of the covenant has two important elements: on the one hand, the covenant expresses God’s universality and his involvement in human affairs; on the other hand, it provides the form for man’s communal involvement in, and response to, God’s promises and blessings, with the focus on man’s obedience to God. Different from Calvin’s conception of the covenant (related to his views on predestination, in terms of which the covenant consists mainly of the relationship between an austere deity and his elect), the Zurich view of the covenant reflects man’s dynamic partnership in the covenant: God promises what He will do for his confederates; man undertakes to “be upright,” which “uprightness is gotten by faith, hope and charity; in which three are contained all the offices of saints, which are the friends and confederates of the Lord.”[8] This covenant is based on the oaths of the parties involved. In his work The Decades, Bullinger refers to Matt 5:33–34, stating that oath-taking involves the calling or taking to witness of God’s name to confirm the truth of what we say, thereby placing man in danger of God’s wrath and vengeance, “unless we do truly and indeed both speak and do the thing that we promised.”[9]

At almost the same time as the publication of Lex, Rex (1644), Milton’s expressions on Puritan political theory were published.[10] Within the complex developments of Puritanism, this author, in his polemic prose and pamphlets, played a significant role in furthering the cause of republican federalism. Shifting from one mode of discourse to another, more congenial one, Milton, in his anti-prelatical tracts, revealed some of the most deeply held political convictions of the Puritan movement in his defense of the republican ideal.[11] Like Rutherford, Milton concentrated his energy at this time of national crisis on questions that are still of fundamental importance today.[12]

Milton was one of the more influential political thinkers of the mid seventeenth century, soon becoming a potent spokesman for the ideal of the political covenant as the basis for theo-republicanism. In the midst of the conflicts preceding the English Civil War, Milton advanced federal republicanism as the ideal for establishing a free commonwealth, as regards liberty of thought and speech. In particular, Milton looked to the Mosaic polity of the Hebrew Scriptures for ideal forms of political governance. Working in Cambridge, the center of Puritan political thought, Milton promoted the ideal of the covenant as the basis of the free commonwealth.[13] Gough states that contract theory became what may almost be called the official theory of the Commonwealth party. This theory was expounded by Milton in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, written as an express justification of resistance against unjust political power.[14] Milton’s political theory, according to Gough, was largely borrowed from continental writers, and he was one of the earliest English publicists to expound a thoroughgoing contract theory. In certain areas he carried it some distance ahead of the theories of most of his contemporaries.[15]

The Reformation brought about a renewed interest in the Scriptural application of theology to social issues, eventually leading, among other things, to the inheritance of Reformation Zurich’s covenantal theory in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain. In this regard, Rutherford played an integral part in the development of Bullinger’s covenantal political theory. It was during this development that a divergence from Reformed covenantal political theory occurred, in which Milton played a central role. This investigation brings to light not only the theoretical commonality between two of the final bastions of Puritan political theory, but also exposes a fundamental divergence in seventeenth-century Puritan constitutional theory, reminiscent of the divergence between George Buchanan’s neo-Stoic influences[16] and Knox’s theologico-political covenantalism, approximately half a century earlier: where one stream followed the theologico-political covenantalism that emanated from Zurich, the other exhibited a tendency towards a more enlightened Christian understanding regarding theology and political theory. This split not only raises new questions as to the true roots of enlightened Christian political covenantalism, but also provides more depth concerning the potential influence of pre-modern humanistic thought on Western constitutional theory. Lurking beneath the unified surface lies a plethora of divergent insights related to a comparative analysis of Rutherford’s and Milton’s theologies and political theories.[17] This also calls for a cautious approach to be taken when perceiving Puritan political theory as united in essential theologico-political issues, especially those pertaining to the covenant.

II. The Biblical and Political Covenant

Rutherford pointed to the covenants in the Old Testament, maintaining that there is indeed a covenant between the king and the people, and that both are pledged to God to preserve the true religion.[18] Rutherford referred to Jehoida who made a covenant between the Lord and the people (including the king).[19] Beyond the uniqueness of Lex, Rex as a document attempting the union between natural and divine law, lies the idea of the biblical covenant and its implications for governance, together with the exercise of civil and religious justice. Lex, Rex was nothing less than a successful attempt to ground society in both religious and political covenants. Rutherford believed that the “godly” would have an active role to play in ushering in Christ’s kingdom, which was an indication of his conviction of the community’s active and responsible role in fulfilling the covenantal conditions. This paved the way for the materialization of Christ’s kingdom. Rutherford supported a collective responsibility in the covenant and the resultant punishments that may arise when the covenantal conditions are violated. Rutherford agreed with the idea that if the land sins against God, it will be punished (as Judah was punished for the sins of king Manasseh).[20] The relationship between God and man is mutual indeed; it is so mutual that if the people break the covenant, God is no longer bound to fulfill his part of the agreement.[21] The covenant gives the believer the right of law to plead with God with respect to his fidelity and the right to be bound to that covenant that obliges him by reason of his fidelity.[22] Rutherford confirmed this same covenant when distinguishing between the indebtedness between God and the king on the one hand, and between God and the people on the other.[23] A people in covenant with God, though mortal as individuals, cannot die.[24]

Three covenants were postulated by Rutherford, namely, the covenant between God and the people, the covenant between God and the king, and the covenant between the king and the people. Rutherford clearly distinguished the covenant between God and the people on the one hand, and the covenant between the king and the people on the other, by referring to Joash who made another covenant with the people. According to Rutherford, whoever made a promise to another, gave to that other a right or jurisdiction to challenge their promises to God, king, and people.[25] Politics to Rutherford was primarily based on the demands of the covenant between God and the people, and secondly, on the covenant between the king and the people. Rutherford’s treatment of Scotland’s history was modeled on the way the Hebrew prophets treated the history of Israel.[26] Rutherford also accommodated a covenant between God and the king, and in this regard he emphasized that this covenant was clearly to be distinguished from the covenant between the king and the people.[27]

A large section of Lex, Rex deals with the covenant between the king and the people. According to Rutherford, the covenant between David and Israel was not a covenant between God and man exclusively, but also a covenant between the king and the people.[28] If the king, merely because he had the title of king, was exempt by privilege from all covenant obligations to his subjects, then no law of men could lawfully reach him for any contract violated by him; he could not then be a debtor to his subjects if he borrowed money from them. Therefore, there must be a covenant obligation between the king and the people.[29] Rutherford referred to Romulus who covenanted with the people, and to Zenophon who said there was a covenant between Cyrus and the Persians. He also referred to Gentilis and Grotius who proved that kings are bound to perform oaths and contracts with their people.[30]

The covenant between the king and people is reported in Deut 17, and just as David was limited by the covenant, so were the rest.31 Rutherford also confirmed the covenant between the king and the people, by stating that the general covenant of nature is predisposed in the making of a king where there is no written or social covenant.32 Just as there was a mutual understanding of the covenant between God and the people, so was there one between the king and the people. The king accepts the crown upon the tenor of a mutual covenant in which he must govern according to the law.[33] The people are no less bound to this covenant than the king, and the king’s duty is to compel them to observe the terms of this covenant: “Each may compell the other to mutuall performance.”[34] Even the kings of Scotland, according to Rutherford, are obliged to swear and make their faithful covenant to the true Church of God, so that the bond and contract shall be mutual and reciprocal between the prince and the people.[35]

In Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Milton also expressed his appreciation for the covenantal dimension of Scottish politics.[36] According to Milton, civil government has a moral and vow-like nature, aimed at the good of the subjects. Therefore, the purpose of the political covenant is to ensure and promote the good of the subjects, to further the good of society—salus populi suprema lex.[37] Applied to the political existence of the subjects in the commonwealth, it means that rulers and subjects enter into covenants to attain the ends of justice.[38]

Milton rejected the notion that kings are accountable to none but God, because this would be the overturning of all law and government.[39] One of the pillars supporting the principle of the divine right of kings was that kings are accountable to God alone. In sixteenth-century Scotland, the principle of the divine right of kings was emphasized by James I, who undertook to provide Cardinal Belarmine with an exposition of this principle. James I explained that a king did not receive his authority from the hands of a Pope or any other church officer, but directly from God himself. According to Dunning, James I, before his succession to the English throne, had formulated a systematic statement of the divine right of kings in his short treatise, The True Law of Free Monarchy. This work was the formal repudiation of the teachings which Buchanan, as the tutor of James, had embodied in the DeJure Regni apud Scotos.[40] Similar to Milton, Rutherford vehemently opposed the concept of a divine right of kings. Rae comments that Lex, Rex “literally shattered the old mischievous idea of the Divine Right of Kings.”[41] It can be contended that the idea of the divine right of kings acted as a catalyst to the initiation and development of Rutherford’s and Milton’s views on the political covenant.

However, Rutherford’s emphasis of the double-covenant scheme is not present in Milton’s political theory. Contrary to Rutherford, Milton did not explicitly refer to the covenant between God and the community. Milton’s political theory revolves around the political covenant, the covenant between the king and the people, which is similar to Buchanan’s views on politics, the root of which should rather be sought in the sources of the latter’s neo-Stoicism. In this regard, Milton moved dangerously close to the view that the political contract becomes merely a device to facilitate intercourse between men, where morality is identical with expedience, and where what is right and just will therefore vary according to circumstances—all morals and the law eventually being reduced to convention. Different from the Calvinist monarchomachs, Buchanan postulated a popularist covenantalism—the people consent to the installation of a ruler to secure their existing rights, and to whom the people assign the exercise of their law-making powers, solely as a matter of convenience. While Rutherford’s political covenantalism followed in the path of the traditional Reformed political theory, Milton’s showed marked influences of Buchanan’s views. Rutherford was clear on the fact that the “Protestant Covenant” was to take precedence over the peace and order of the commonwealth; the covenant was not there merely for peace, but to promote the protestant religion.[42]

III. Covenantal Conditions and Oath-taking

Rutherford referred to the covenant between the king and the people as the mechanism by which governments were founded, and “when the people transferred their virtual power of government to the king, thereby giving him a formal or active power of governing, ‘they measure out, by ounce weights, so much royal power, and no more or no less’.. .. They gave it out ‘upon this and that condition, that they may take again to themselves what they gave out upon this condition if the condition be violated’.”[43] Rutherford added that the people made a man a king “covenant-wise and conditionally” so that the king rules according to God’s law.[44]

According to Milton, owing to the temptation of power that causes political rulers to turn to injustice and partiality, the need arose to set the law above the magistrate.[45] When this would not serve, the only remedy left to the subjects was to set conditions and take oaths from all kings and magistrates at their first installment, “to doe impartial justice by Law.”[46] Upon those terms and no other, political rulers received allegiance from the people, by bonding or covenanting to obey them in the execution of those laws which the people had made or assented to.[47] The conditionality of public and private covenanting is of paramount importance in Milton’s theory. The political covenant between a king and his people is governed, like the marriage contract, by conditions, and if the purpose of the covenant is not attained, it ceases to be binding. All covenants and contracts are made according to the present state of persons and things, and they generally have the laws of nature and reason included in them, though not expressed.[48]

Milton stated that the historical basis of the political covenant is situated in the necessity of subjects to curb the injustice of political rulers: originally rulers governed well “and with much equity decided all things at thir own arbitrement,” till the temptation of such power left in their hands perverted them to injustice and partiality.[49] Suffering from these injustices, the subjects consented to confine and limit the authority of the rulers by subjecting them to the law.[50] When this would not serve, so that the law was either not executed or misapplied, they had recourse to the only remedy left to them, “to put conditions and take Oaths from all Kings and Magistrates at thir first instalment to doe impartial justice by Law: who upon those termes and no other, receav’d Allegeance from the people.”[51] They bound themselves by covenant to obey these terms in the execution of those laws which the people had made or assented to.[52]

Regarding the covenant and oath, Rutherford, when referring to the similarity between the king’s promise and oath, stated that the promise and covenant of any man, including the king, do no less to bring him under a civil obligation and political co-action to keep his promise, than an oath.[53] Rutherford maintained that the king cannot be above the covenant and law made between him and his people at the taking of his coronation oath.[54] To Rutherford, the oath taken by the king is a religious obligation, and not merely a ceremony to please the people or an arbitrary ceremony.[55] Rutherford also stated that if a master binds himself by oath to his servant, he shall not receive such a benefit of such a service if he violates the oath; and such an oath must give the servant a right to challenge his master.[56]

In similar fashion, Milton contended that the coronation oath introduces a vow-like covenant between the king (or magistrate) and the subjects. In Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Eikonoklastes, and The First Defence, Milton regarded the coronation oath to be of primary importance for the establishment of the political covenant. The king or magistrate that promises under oath faithfully to perform his duties or office, binds his fidelity to those who require the oath of him.[57] The bonding or covenanting of the ruler to obey the people is sometimes expressed in terms of a warning, that if the king or magistrate were to prove unfaithful to his trust, the people would be disengaged.[58] This trust emanates from the coronation oath concluded by the king at his installation as ruler.[59] The coronation oath is the deed by which the king, in the presence of God, binds himself to his subjects.[60] If the king by not taking the oath is unbound, then the people are so too.[61] The oath is, therefore, neither fictitious nor merely ceremonial, but has a meaning “which would forever be not satisfactory to tyranny.”[62] The important point, though, is that the king, at his installation, by means of the oath, binds himself to God and the people, in order to rule according to their well-being.[63] Rutherford and Milton were therefore unified in their expressions on the relevance of the conditional nature of political covenanting, as well as the importance of oath-taking as seal for the exercise of these conditions.

IV. Sovereignty of the People and the Election of the King

According to Rutherford, “[The] pilot is less than the whole passengers; the general less than the whole army; the tutor less than all the children; the physician less than all the living men whose health he careth for; the master or teacher less than all the scholars, because the part is less than the whole; the king is but part and member of the kingdom.”[64] The people give themselves conditionally and covenant-wise to the king, as to a public servant (and patron and tutor).[65] Rutherford also stated that kings are given by God for the preservation of the people, and therefore “the gift (namely the king), as the gift, is less than the party (namely the people as a whole), on whom the gift is bestowed.”[66] By this, Rutherford emphasized the important status of the community as compared to that of the ruler.

In similar fashion, Milton suggested that the political covenant comes into existence by free people, not intending to enslave themselves to the wills and lusts of their rulers, but desiring the good of society.[67] To this end, kings and magistrates are not appointed to be the lords and masters of the subjects, but their “Deputies and Commissioners, to execute, by vertue of thir entrusted power, that justice which else every man by bond of nature and of Cov’nant must have executed for himself, and for one another.”[68] In The First Defence (1651), Milton understood the coronation oath to be binding upon the king “as the most rigorous law,” to do justice to all.[69] This implies, among other things, that the king is the people’s servant and agent, delegated by the people.[70] Milton also contended that it is the king’s duty to call parliaments whenever, and as often as, the people ask, “since it is the people’s business, and not the king’s, that is to be treated by that assembly, and to be ordered as the people wish.”[71] In Milton’s view, Aurelius acknowledged that all power and property belonged to the Senate and the people.[72] The power of kings and magistrates is no more than a “derivative, transferr’d and committed to them in trust from the People, to the Common good of them all, in whom the power yet remaines fundamentally, and cannot be tak’n from them, without a violation of thir natural birth-right.”[73] In this regard Rutherford stated that the king is above the people by reason of derived authority as a watchman, as well as in actual supremacy, while the king is inferior to the people (in respect of the fountain of power), just as the effect is to the cause.[74]

Regarding the election (and rejection) of the king, Rutherford stated that the people, in their first election, must limit the king in such a manner that he governs by law, and must give him so much power for their good and no more.[75] If the estates of a kingdom give the power to the king, it is their own power in the fountain; and if they give it for their good, they may likewise have the power to judge when it is used against them. Therefore, the people have the power to limit the power that they have given.[76] If the estates create the king, and make a specific person king to the exclusion of others, they give himpower.[77] According to Rutherford, it is absurd to think that the parliamentary power that creates the crown, and gives the sword and all to the king, must give power to the king to use the sword to annul the power of the parliament itself.[78] Regarding Deut 17:14–16, Rutherford commented that it makes no sense that the Holy Spirit should give a commandment to the people to make a certain person a king and forbid them to make another a king, if the people have no active influence in making a king at all.[79] In fact, the assets of the nation belong to the people as a whole.[80] To Rutherford, those who have power to elect kings, have the power to remove kings.[81] Rutherford, throughout Lex, Rex, emphasized the active role that the people play in the election of the king.[82]

Milton cited numerous examples of covenanting by kings to confirm that the right of the people to choose (and reject) a king was granted by God himself in Deut 17:14.[83] Milton added: “Our king made us not, but we him. Nature has given a father to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own kings. So that the people are not for the king, but the king for them.”[84] The subjects are justified in renouncing their allegiance to a ruler who seeks his own rather than the public good, because his authority was first given conditionally by the people and for the good of the kingdom only.[85] If the people with their wits about them, did give power over themselves to a king or magistrate for purposes of the common good only, there can be no reason why (and for exactly the opposite purpose—to prevent total ruin to them all) they may not take back the power they gave to the ruler.[86] The fact that kings and magistrates hold authority from the people, in the first place for their good, implies that the people may, as often as they judge it for the best, “either choose him or reject him, retaine him or depose him though no Tyrant, meerly by the liberty and right of free born Men, to be govern’d as seems to them best.”[87]

V. The Status of the Decalogue

One of the most divergent and essential issues regarding Rutherford’s and Milton’s political theories was the emphasis on the Divine Law as a condition of the biblical and political covenants. Rutherford was clear on the content of the conditions of the covenant, it being the Divine Law, based on the Decalogue. The Divine Law serves as the terms of the contract—the king promises to govern according to the law of God, which includes defending the true religion, and the people promise obedience to God and the king. Flinn adds that the nature of the contract, then, is that both ruler and ruled mutually obligate themselves to the law of God.[88] The law, according to Maclear, forms the main theme in Lex, Rex. All rightful sovereignty lies in the law, whether it is the authority of the king, estates, populace, or church. The king is truly king only when he identifies himself with the law, and only to the degree that he succeeds in executing the law. The nearest the king personifies the law, the more king he is; “in his remotest distance from Law and Reason, he is a Tyrant.”[89]

Rutherford emphasized that the condition required, before the people make a person their king, is that he covenant with the people that he will rule according to God’s law, just as David had to rule according to God’s law. If God, by the people’s free election, makes a king, God makes him a king conditionally by covenant which God expresses in the very words of the people’s covenant with the king: “So they walk as kings in the law of the Lord, and take heed of God’s commandment and statutes to do them.”[90] The people can never enter into an obligation with a ruler in which the terms of the contract are outside the law of God. Rutherford, on the law in the context of the biblical covenant, stated that any bond that God’s law imposes on the king, comes absolutely from God and not from any voluntary contract or covenant between the king and the people who made him king. Therefore, if the king transgresses the law he will be accountable to God and not to any man on earth.[91] According to Rutherford, the king “is made by God and the people king, for the church and people of God’s sake that he may defend true religion for the salvation of all.”[92]

Charles, who acted as king of a nation in covenant with God, had been obligated to prosecute heresy and idolatry with the same zeal as the Old Testament rulers. By allowing these transgressions, he had severed the nation’s covenant with the Lord.[93] The people, stated Rutherford, as Christian men walking by the rule of the Word, choose a Christian ruler who would procure the good of the church and keep and guard both Tables of the law, for the word of God gives directions to the people that they should not, as men or as heathens, choose any type of ruler, but godly men, fearing God, “and such kings as read in the Book of the Law when they sit upon the Throne, Deuteronomy 11, 17:15–20, Exodus 18:21.”[94] The magistrate is “fore prophesied” to be a nurse-father to the church under the New Testament, to keep and guard both Tables of the law.[95] Rutherford added that in the context of Rom 13, the magistrate must uphold the conditions of the covenant which include the precepts of both the first and second Tables.[96] The power of the king is given as a blessing and favor of God to preserve both Tables of the law.[97]

Milton’s emphasis on the New Testamentary covenant that manifests itself in Christ’s work of redemption under the command of love, and the New Testamentary covenant of grace that “did away with the preceding covenant,” confirmed his dispensationalistic tendencies, and avoidance of the Decalogue.

Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we by rightful doom remediles
Were lost in death, till he that dwelt above
High thron’d in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied his glory, ev’n to nakedness;
And that great Cov’nant which we still transgress
Intirely satisfi’d,
And the full wrath beside
Of vengeful Justice bore for our excess,
And seals obedience first with wounding smart.[98]

According to Milton, the Gospel is the “straitest and the dearest cov’nant” that can be made between God and man,[99] “God being now no more a judge after the sentence of the Law, nor as it were a schoolmaster of perishable rites, but a most indulgent father governing his Church as a family of sons in their discreet age.”[100] The Gospel is a covenant revealing grace![101] “.. . wee being now his adopted sons, and nothing fitter for us to think on, then to be like him, united to him. . .”[102] The Gospel is our new covenant.[103] The Gospel, or new covenant, did away with the preceding covenant: “On the introduction of the Gospel, or new covenant through faith in Christ, the whole of the preceding covenant, in other words the entire Mosaic law, was abolished.”[104] Similar to the covenant under the Old Testamentary dispensation, the covenant of grace is also conditional: Mark 16:16 states, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”[105]

For Rutherford, the one and eternal covenant or testament contained the condition of obedience to the Law of God, which remained the same under the Old and New Testaments. Milton’s covenant, however, was a New Testamentary covenant, based on the gospel of love, the entire Mosaic law having been abolished. This reminds one of the influence of dispensationalism that surfaced towards the latter half of the seventeenth century, which not only acted as a catalyst to the secularization of the covenant, but also to political theory in general. Support of the love command, to the neglect of a righteous God’s Old Testamentary covenantal relationship with man, received more emphasis. Consequently, this not only assisted in the disintegration of the idea of the biblical covenant, but also invited the dictates of the mind to determine man’s political theory and activity. The supposedly “archaic” covenantal dealings of God with his people based on the Decalogue (as taught in the Old Testament), could no longer serve as authority for political theory. This resulted in a new source of authority, namely a natural law theory excessively loyal to reason. As a result, the organization and regulation of power, as well as the application of justice, became not only arbitrary, but was also exposed to the whims of rational and expedient options concerning form and substance. A further effect was the negation of political mechanisms such as responsibility, accountability, and obligation, mechanisms so essential to the covenantal relationship between God and society. While Rutherford subjected the sovereignty of the people to God’s eternal law, Milton proceeded towards the sovereignty of the law laid down by the people.

VI. Political Resistance and the Covenant

The justification of the republican revolution was drawn directly and explicitly from the covenant idea in either its religious or secular form, “that is to say, either because God, in establishing His covenant with humanity, rejected tyranny as a violation of the terms of that covenant, or because autonomous humans came together in political covenants or compacts to form civil society in order to protect themselves from the errors of living in a state of nature and to gain the benefits of association on the basis of mutuality. In essence, covenants or compacts created the publics out of which republics could be constructed.”[106] This is true of both Rutherford and Milton.

The covenant played an important role in the molding of Rutherford’s theory on resistance, and although popular consent and self-defense are used as qualifying terms concerning the right to resistance, the foundational qualification for such right is the covenant, and the community’s responsibility within this covenant. The link between Rutherford’s covenantal thought and his theory on resistance also comes to the fore in his answer to the statement (in opposition to resistance to tyranny) that God works through miracles when delivering the people from a tyrant, as was the case with Moses, whom God sent to free the Israelites from Egypt. The Israelites’ failure to resist Pharaoh does not negate the fact that a community may resist a tyrant; Pharaoh did not, after all, receive his crown from Israel.[107] This supports Rutherford’s understanding that those who elect the king may also remove the king under certain conditions, such as tyranny. Another reason was that Pharaoh had not sworn to defend Israel, nor did he become their king on the condition that he should maintain and profess the religion of the God of Israel. Therefore, Israel could not accuse Pharaoh of breach of oath. A further reason was that Pharaoh “was never circumcised, nor within the covenant of the God of Israel in profession.”[108]

In addition, cognizance must be taken of Salmon’s comment regarding the similarity of Rutherford’s covenantal thought to Mornay’s, and therefore the strong possibility of Mornay’s influence on Rutherford’s theory on resistance. Salmon states that Lex, Rex identified itself with all the principles of Mornay’s Vindiciae, Rutherford representing himself as the champion of the contract theory of the Vindiciae, which included the resistance theory from the contractual theory emanating from Zurich.[109]

In Milton’s theory of federal politics, the political covenant is constitutive for political legality and civil liberties in the commonwealth. Not only does the political covenant set the boundaries for the exercise of legitimate power by political rulers, it also enshrines the right freely to depose a king or magistrate governing in conflict with the good of the people. Briefly stated, the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people.[110] In The First Defence, Milton elaborated on the principle of authority entrusted to kings by the people. Kings in general receive authority from the people, entrusted to them but subject to certain conditions.[111] If the king does not abide by these conditions, that power, which was but a trust, should be returned to the people.[112] Where a people have given power over themselves to a king or a magistrate for the common good of all, there is no reason why, for exactly the inverse purpose, they may not again take back the power to prevent the utter ruin of them all.[113] Because the only condition for entrusting magistrates with power is one of trust, and the safety of the people lies within the supreme law, the law should advantage the people against a tyrant and unfit kings should be deposed.[114]

In The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, the liberty of subjects to depose unfaithful kings or magistrates is formulated widely. Since political rulers hold their authority of the people, “both originally and naturally for their good in the first place, and not his own,” the people may as often as they shall judge for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him.[115] In his Angli Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (Defence of the People of England Against Claudius Anonymous, Alias Salmasius his Defence of the King [1651]), Milton states his support for the principle that the people who have appointed a king can, by the same right, put him down.[116] The refusal of the king or magistrate to govern in the public good, and relying only on his singular judgment, amounts to denying the people “that good which they being all Freemen seek earnestly, and call for.”[117] It is “an arrogance and iniquity beyond imagination rude and unreasonable.”[118] Although without magistrates and civil government, there can be no commonwealth, no human society, and no living in the world, no obedience is due to rulers who do not govern to the good of the people. This right of the people to alter the government as they judge most conducive to the public good appeared to Milton to be indeed that in which all civil liberty is rooted.[119]

In his political tracts Milton was intent on proving that the people have a natural right to break their contract with a ruler and that this right applies equally to all in the commonwealth, this, in effect, being the most fundamental political right of the subjects in the commonwealth. This liberty is not Caesar’s, but “God’s own birthday gift to us”: this liberty being the right freely to resist delivering themselves into slavery to Caesar, “to a man, that is, and, what is more, to an unjust man, a wicked man, a tyrant.”[120] Parallel to his views on the covenant of marriage and the grounds for divorce, Milton argued in favor of an exclusive right of the people to depose their ruler, where the main aim of the covenant is broken. The covenant between a king and his people is governed, like the covenant of marriage, by conditions; and if the good which is the end of the covenant is not attained, it ceases to be binding.[121] Reason and equity testify that any law or covenant, however solemnly concluded between God and man, or man and man, joined in the presence of God, does not bind against the prime and principal scope of its own institution. Because covenants are intended for the good of both parties, they are not intended for “making miserable of them both.” Equity is contained in every covenant and, therefore,

“extremity may dissolve it.”[122] Referring to the history of England, Milton stated that it would not be illegal to depose and put to death tyrannous kings (acting contrary to their coronation oath).[123]

However, similar to Buchanan, Milton neglected the relevance of the active role that the people’s representatives have in the resistance to tyranny. Milton tended to provide the people collectively and also individually with this responsibility. This carries with it the risk of establishing an arbitrary majoritarian activism, where popularist decision-making becomes the measure, among others, with regard to serious issues such a sresistance aimed at the ruler. Milton’s expression of a popularistic theory on resistance is in contrast to Rutherford’s, the latter tempering the justification of resistance by implementing as qualification the violation of the covenantal conditions based on the Divine Law and the responsibilities of the representative political bodies. Also, an interesting contrast between Milton and Rutherford on resistance is the latter’s emphasis on the active role of the people’s representatives in resistance to tyranny. According to Rutherford, the estates have the power to resist and limit the power they give to the king, when such power is used against themselves (as well as the parliament):[124] “Inferior judges, as judges, are immediately subordinate to God as the king, and must be guilty of blood before God if they use not the sword against bloody cavaliers and Irish cut-throats.”[125] Rutherford pointed to the thirty-sixth article of the Belgic Confession of Faith which states that all magistrates, no less than the king and though inferior to the king, must exercise their God-given duty.[126] Rutherford also refers to Mornay, who stated that the care of religion is not only given to the king, but also to the inferior judges, in the context of resisting the ungodly magistrate.[127]

VII. Conclusion

From a theological angle, there are major differences between Rutherford and Milton. Milton tended to concentrate mainly on the importance of man’s will and his reason, which has not become imperfect as a result of the Fall.[128] Not only did Milton postulate the infallibility of man’s reason, but he also added that man’s personal religion depends, to a large measure, on himself, to enter into a covenant with God. On the other hand, Rutherford always balances a Thomistic belief in natural law with a Calvinian conviction that, because of the Fall, unaided reason was inadequate and the mind was not necessarily a vehicle of rationality. In order to function properly, reason had to depend on divine revelation, which re-equipped it with the knowledge about God and morality that man had possessed before the Fall.[129] In addition, although Rutherford emphasized the conditionality of the covenant of grace and the role of “preparations” for justification, he also insisted that the conditions and the preparations were themselves supplied by divine grace.[130] Rutherford also attached all political activities exercised by the people ultimately to God’s doing, where the people’s active participation are means, instruments, and second causes by which God reigns.[131] Milton’s indulgence in an enlightened Christian and Arminian conception of reason and works respectively, was reflected in his politics as the role of men entering into the covenant and enforcing it, based on man and his capacity.

Rutherford and Milton both emphasized the political covenant, its mutual and conditional nature, the king’s covenantal responsibilities, the legitimization of resistance against a corrupt king, the active role the people play in the election and disposal of the king (coupled with the “good and safety of the community”), and the invalidity of the “divine right of kings.” However, there are major differences between their political theories. Rutherford’s political theory subscribes to a democratic nationalism based on a truly Reformed biblical covenantal design, while Milton’s theory borders on democratic nationalism of a rather enlightened political theory. Milton’s neo-Stoic leanings challenge the biblically grounded Reformed view of governance found in Rutherford, edging his political theory towards a less biblically inclined and more “enlightened” stance. Milton focuses on the free decision of a population to subject themselves to the king (thereby making kingship an office conferred upon an individual, as opposed to its determination by divine decree and eternal Law); he upholds the rational capacities of human beings rather than a Calvinian and Calvinist view of cognitive impairment due to man’s fall; and he endorses the collective power of the people so strongly that he slants towards “arbitrary majoritarian activism,” typical of the political theories of the Enlightenment.

Rutherford’s political discussions on the biblical covenant surpass those of Milton, whose emphasis is mainly concerned with the political covenant, similar to Buchanan, for whom the biblical covenant had a limited appeal.[132] According to Rutherford, the conditions of the biblical and political covenants, the election of the king by the people, the resistance of the people to tyranny, and the day-to-day political governance are explicitly limited and regulated by the measure of God’s law as contained in Scripture.

Regarding resistance to tyranny, Rutherford, in Lex, Rex, provided a careful approach, first calling for patience and suffering before resorting to active resistance,[133] while Milton promoted the political activism of the people. In addition, contrary to Milton, Rutherford did not deny the distinction between the legitimacy of political action by inferior magistrates and by private persons. In other words, according to Rutherford, a tyrant may not necessarily be punished by the private citizens as Milton postulated.[134] Milton expressed, as did Buchanan, an individual and popularist approach to resistance, from which stems an inclination towards a popularist activism.

Lex, Rex attests to a political mind that was inundated with biblical references. Rutherford regarded the Old Testament narratives as something akin to a casebook, illustrating principles which could also be gathered from human reason.[135] Since he believed that the God who inspired Scripture also created man’s conscience, it is, according to Coffey, no surprise that he stated that “the Scripture’s arguments may be drawn out of the school of nature,”[136] but any interpretation of Lex, Rex which focuses on its arguments from natural reason and misses its uniquely biblical arguments is incomplete.[137] Coffey adds: “.. . he [Rutherford] was drawing from it [Scripture] something that fallen reason could never tell him—the covenant obligations of a godly nation.”[138]

Not only did Rutherford bring Buchanan’s political theory back to Scripture, he also provided opposition to Milton’s neo-Stoic influences. Unlike Milton,

Rutherford, against the background of Scripture, balanced the communal will with reason, with the Divine Law, with God’s absolute sovereignty, and with the active and responsible political role of the community.

Rutherford and Milton were leading theorists within the same period of Scottish and English history. Both supported the idea of democratic nationalism, but there was a central difference. Rutherford’s democratic nationalism was based on, and tempered by, the biblical covenant; while Milton’s, in the tradition of Buchanan, was colored by neo-Stoic conceptions of social contractarianism. Buchanan’s popularist federalism and its implications of democratic nationalism represented a major turn in the development of Reformational politics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. England was gradually secularized under the influence of a post-Puritan generation, which contributed to a separation between the religious and secular covenantal traditions.[139] The modern theorists of the post-Puritan generation embraced the idea of a secular covenant, at first reducing divine involvement to a peripheral place, and then gradually eliminating that involvement.[140] Milton’s political theory borders on support of this reduction of divine involvement to a peripheral place regarding the covenant idea in politics.

Rutherford and Milton represent two detectable streams of political theory to be found towards the close of the Puritanist era in Britain (the one marking the end of an era, the other the beginning)—biblical covenantalism versus an enlightened Christian democratic nationalism. In terms of Edgar Boden-heimer’s[141] classification of the evolution of the classical law of nature philosophy, in its progress toward the development of classical liberal political theory both Milton and Rutherford should belong to the second epoch, which started approximately with the English Puritan Revolution of the 1640s. Whereas Rutherford opposed the emerging tensions of pre-liberalism in British political thought, Milton’s pre-liberal approach towards politics served as an important catalyst toward free capitalism in economics and liberalism in politics. The third epoch, marked by a strong belief in popular sovereignty and democracy, and natural law entrusted to the “general will” and the majority decision of the people, was the outflow of ideas generated by pre-liberals working within the context of Puritanism. A comparative study of Puritan political thought is important to establish the role of pre-liberalism in the evolution of the classic law of nature and social contractarianism in the early modern development of political theory and the extent to which it was informed by Reformed theological ideas.

Notes

1. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 31. The term Puritan is clouded by many different definitions and interpretations. A summary of some of the main views on the term is given in Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1998), 82. The term is used here in the sense of Perry Miller’s description of the “marrow of Puritan divinity” as a theology based on the idea of the covenant (Errand into the Wilderness[Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1956], 82–83). Samuel Rutherford represented the Presbyterian line of Puritan thought which, “in a political sense. .. denote[s] that section of opinion which had supported the parliamentary cause in the civil war but which was alienated by, or which steered clear of politics after, Pride’s Purge [December 1648] and the execution of the king” (Blair Warden, The Rump Parliament, 1648–1653 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], 10).
2. Daniel J. Elazar, The Covenant Tradition in Politics: Vol. 2, Covenant and Commonwealth (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 231.
3. Ibid.
4. See Andries Raath and Shaun de Freitas, “Heinrich Bullinger and the Marian Exiles: The Political Foundations of Puritanism,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 28 (2001): 1-34; and Andries Raath and Shaun de Freitas, “Theologico-political Federalism: The Office of Magistracy and the Legacy of Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575),” WTJ 63 (2001): 285-304.
5. All references to Milton’s Works (W) are to the Columbia Edition of the Works of John Milton (ed. Frank Allen Patterson; 18 vols. in 21; New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–1938). The roman numeral refers to the volume, while the arabic numeral refers to the page of that volume. Within parentheses comes first the work of Milton referred to, followed by the number of the book, line, or other division within that work. Works by Milton referred to in this article are The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (abbr. TE), Angli Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (Defence of the People of England Against Claudius Anonymous, Alias Salamasius his Defence of the King) [The First Defence] (abbr. 1D), Angli Pro Populo Anglicano Secunda [The Second Defence] (abbr. 2D), Eikonoklastes (abbr. E), Christian Doctrine (abbr. CD), Reason of Church Government urg’d against Prelaty (abbr. CG), History of Britain (abbr. B), Elegy (abbr. EL), AdLeonaram Romae Canentem (abbr. LR), In Quintum Novembris (abbr. QN), Paradise Regained (abbr. PS), Tetrachordon (abbr. T), The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (abbr. D), and Psalms (abbr. PS). All abbreviations are those used in the Columbia edition.
6. Richard Flinn, “Samuel Rutherford and Puritan Political Theory,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction 5 (1978–1979): 49. Also see Francis Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview (2d ed.; Wheaton: Crossway 1985), 137; J. F Maclear, “Samuel Rutherford: The Law and the King,” in Calvinism and the Political Order (ed. George L. Hunt; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), 86; DavidW Hall, Savior or Servant? Putting Government in Its Place (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: The Covenant Foundation, 1996), 349; and William M. Hetherington, History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (repr., Edmonton, Canada: Still Waters Revival Books, 1991), 147.
7. See Shaun A. de Freitas, “Samuel Rutherford on Law and Covenant: The Impact of Theologico-political Federalism on Constitutional Theory” (LL.M. thesis, University of the Free State, 2003).
8. The Decades of Heinrich Bullinger (4 vols.; ed. for the Parker Society; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849–1852), 3:171 (Decade 3, Sermon 6 [III:6]).
9. Ibid., 2:247 (II:3).
10. Milton’s most important political works are The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), The First Defence (1651), and The Second Defence (1654).
11. See William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Reformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).
12. See Arthur E. Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma 1641–1660 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), x.
13. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, 243–45 and 261.
14. J. W. Gough, The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 94.
15. Ibid.
16. Buchanan gave the Zurich covenantal legacy a secularist flavor which diverged from sixteenth-century Scottish Reformed political theory. Buchanan’s secular postulation of the covenant was opposed to the Zurich legacy of the biblical covenant, of which Knox was an exponent. The impact of Buchanan’s De Jure Regni Apud Scotos on Scottish and English Puritan thought was of meaningful proportions and was influential on both Samuel Rutherford (1600–1660) and John Milton (1608–1674). According to David Irving, Archbishop Spotswood remarked that shortly after the publication of the work, theological students at St. Andrew’s were devoting more attention to it than to Calvin’s Institutes. Aenaes Mackay in his short biography of Buchanan, states that Buchanan’s De Jure Regi Apud Scotoswas a standard work in the hands of the men of the Long Parliament. Milton, in his Defence of the People of England, answers those who question the legality and justice of limited and responsible government: “For Scotland I refer you to Buchanan.” According to Dryden, Milton’s indebtedness to Buchanan is so great that he “stole” his Defence from Buchanan’s De Jure Regni Apud Scotos. For further reading in this regard, seehttp://www.visi.com/~contra_m/ab/jure/jure-chapterl.html. There are no less than twelve explicit and supportive references to Buchanan in Lex, Rex. See Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1982), 34(2) [34 refers to the page number, (2) refers to the column on the page; there are 2 columns per page], 51(1), 75(1), 84(1), 84(2), 98(2), 143(2), 184(1), 209(1)-209(2), 224(1)-224(2), and 225(2). Implicitly Lex, Rex also shows many similarities to DeJure Regni Apud Scotos. In his Works, Milton shows considerable interest in Buchanan’s views and refers explicitly at least twenty-seven times to Buchanan. See Milton, W ,VII: 141(1D2); W, VII: 45(1D8); W,VIII: 79(2D); W, X: 98(B2); W,X: 106(B3); W,X: 131(B3); W, X: 147(B4); W, X: 193(B4); W, X: 203(B5); W, X: 204(B5); W, X: 229(B5); W, X: 86(B2m); W, X: 90(B2m); W, X: 106(B3m); W, X: 229(B5m); W,X: 230(B5m); W,I: 194(EL5.1); W,I: 194(EL5.9); W,I: 228(LR2.6); W,V: 28(TE); W ,V: 29(TE); W ,V: 30(TE); W,I: 180(EL3.22); W,I: 194(EL5.1); W,I: 242(QN80); and W,I: 14(PS136.51).
17. Probably the only direct reference by Milton to Rutherford’s political views is Milton’s statement in On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament (I:71[FC8]): Dare ye for this abjure the civil sword, to force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a classic hierarchy, Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rutherford. Innes lamented the fact that because of Milton, “Rutherford rhymes for ever to the civil sword” (John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], 9–10). On p. 178 Coffey states: “After Charles’s execution in 1649, Milton—who seems to have been familiar with Lex, Rex. . .” Milton certainly had a copy of Lex, Rex; see J. C. Boswell’s Milton’s Library (London: Garland, 1975). Hughes, after pointing out that in many places Milton seems to be following Lex, Rex, comments: “It is strange that nowhere in The Tenure does Milton refer to Samuel Rutherford” (ibid., p. 178). Also see ibid., p. 4: “.. .Lex, Rex (1644), was republished under different titles in 1648 and 1657, and may have influenced John Milton and John Lilxburne.”
18. Gough, The Social Contract, 93.
19. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 54(2).
20. See C. E. Rae, “The Political Thought of Samuel Rutherford” (M.A. thesis, University of Guelph, 1991), 160; Maclear, “Rutherford: Law and King,” 75; and W. Stanford Reid, “John Knox’s Theology of Political Government,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 4 (1988): 539.
21. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 54 (2).
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 56 (1). When mentioning the covenant between Joash and the people, Rutherford adds that there is a covenant between the Lord, on the one hand, and the king and people, on the other (57[1]).
24. Ibid., 78(2).
25. Ibid., 57(1).
26. See Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 227; see also 165 and 168.
27. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 54(1)-54(2).
28. Ibid., 57(1). Also see 60(1), 130(1), 198(2), 199(2), 200(1), and 202(1) concerning the covenant between David and the people (2 Sam 5:1–3); as well as 198(2), 199(2), and 219(2) concerning the covenant between Joash and the people (2 Kgs 11:17–18).
29. Ibid., 60(2).
30. Ibid., 61(1)-61(2).
31. Ibid., 62(1). Also see 140(1).
32. Ibid., 59(2).
33. Ibid., 106(1).
34. Maclear, “Rutherford: Law and King,” 77.
35. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 219(2)-220(1).
36. This confirms Milton s loyal appreciation of political covenant theory bearing in mind Elazar’s comment: “Unlike the Scottish covenanter, whose political culture was already attuned to pact-based political organization and behavior, the (English) Puritans had to struggle within and against a society that prided itself in its organic evolution as a polity and whose current rulers sought to impose a hierarchic structure on that organic polity as the next stage in its development” (Covenant and Commonwealth, 238).
37. See, e.g., W,IV: 75(T10). Similarly according to Rutherford, the terms of the dual covenant stipulated that the king’s rule must be for the salus populi; see Coffey Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 169. In fact, according to Rutherford, the law, which the king is to uphold, concerns the safety of the people (salus populi). See Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 114(1), 119(1)-119(2), and 122(2), regarding the salus populi suprema lex; and 124(1)-124(2), 126(2), and 137(1)-138(1) regarding the safety of the people as a fundamental law.
38. W, V: 9(TE).In Tenure(1649), the concept of the political covenant had already come to fruition in Milton’s thought.
39. W, V: 11–12(TE). Also see W, V: 12(TE).
40. William A. Dunning, A History of Political Theories: From Luther to Montesquieu (New York: MacMillan, 1938), 215.
41. Rae, "Political Thought of Rutherford," 76. Regarding Milton's views on the biblical and political covenants and their inter-relatedness, the comments of Victoria Kahn are to the point: Milton’s reflections on the biblical covenant and political contractarianism reflect the intersection of the language of biblical covenant, with its emphasis on God’s contractual relationship with man, and that of political contract in terms of which God’s covenants with Abraham and Moses—”not to mention the simultaneous cancellation and fulfillment of that covenant by Christ”—formed part of a symbolic language with a range of powerful political implications (“The Metaphysical Contract in Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” in Milton and Republicanism [ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 86). Milton’s political theology was also a pioneering attempt “to mitigate the rigours of Calvinism” by postulating Christ’s cancellation of the covenant of works and substituting a covenant of grace according to which “the individual believer’s God-given faith was itself the enabling condition of works” (ibid., 85). Kahn adds: “In spite of Milton’s diverse and contradictory arguments on covenant and political contract, two core-elements emerge. First, he construes biblical covenant and political contract in similar terms: both are structured as rational, open-ended and revocable agreements that depend for their realization on the performance of the contracting parties. Secondly, Milton’s understanding of covenant and contract is rooted in the interest of the people ‘and for that reason compatible with strategic considerations of reason of state”’ (ibid., 94).
42. Coffey Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 169.
43. Ibid., 164.
44. Ibid.
45. W, V: 9(TE).
46. Ibid.
47. W, V: 9–10(TE).
48. W, IV: 75(T).
49. W, V: 9(TE).
50. W, V: 8–9(TE).
51. W, V: 9(TE).
52. Ibid.
53. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 200(1).
54. Ibid., 126(2).
55. Ibid., 201(1). For more of Rutherford’s emphasis on the importance of the oath see 106(1), 129(1), 199(2), 202(1), 219(2), and 230(1). On 61(1)-61(2), Rutherford mentions Gentilis and Grotius who prove that kings are bound to perform oaths and contracts to their people.
56. Ibid., 61(2). Rutherford states that Israel could not challenge Pharaoh for breach of the oath because Pharaoh did not swear to defend Israel (133[2]).
57. W, V: 8–9(TE).
58. W, V: 9–10(TE).
59. See W, V: 12(TE). Milton referred to the example of William the Conqueror, who was forced more than once to swear to perform not what was agreeable to him, but what the people and the great men of the realm demanded of him. This meant that the crowning of English kings was not permitted until the taking of the oath (W, VII: 537–39[1D12]).
60. See W, V: 12(TE).
61. W, VII: 539(1D12).
62. W, VII: 541(1D12).
63. W, V: 14–15(TE).
64. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 78(1). Also see 79(2) and 119(2).
65. Ibid., 82(1). For additional references to the king as the servant of the people, see 59(1), 70(1), 79(2), and 198(1).
66. Ibid., 77(2)-78(1).
67. W, V: 8–9(TE).
68. Ibid.
69. W, VII: 453(1D9).
70. Ibid.
71. W, V: 12(TE).
72. W, VII: 117(1D2).
73. W, V: 10(TE).
74. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 115(1). Also see 81(2)-82(1).
75. Ibid., 201(2). Also see 128(1).
76. Ibid., 143(1). According to Rutherford, power is not an immediate inheritance from heaven, but a birthright of the people which is borrowed from them, and the people may “let it out for their good, and resume it when a man is drunk with it” (123[2]).
77. Ibid., 185(2).
78. Ibid., 186(1).
79. Ibid., 7(2), 80(2), 17(2), 18(2), and 19(2).
80. Ibid., 234(2).
81. Ibid., 126(2).
82. See ibid., 6(2)-7(1), 8(1), 29(2), 33(2), 34(1), 50(1)-50(2), 52(2), 57(2), 63(1), 69(2), 71(1), and 126(2)-127(1).
83. W, V: 14(TE).
84. John Sanderson, ‘But the People’s Creatures’: The Philosophical Basis of the English Civil War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 57.
85. W, IV: 117(T). Sanderson views this as the fundamental law in Milton s political theory It decrees that power should be exercised for the common good of all. The immediate corollary of this law is that where magistrates desert the common good as their end, they become enemies to be resisted as an external enemy should be resisted (Philosophical Basis of the English Civil War, 132).
86. W, VII: 359(1D6).
87. W ,V: 14(TE).
88. Flinn, ‘Rutherford and Puritan Political Theory," 63.
89. Maclear, “Rutherford: Law and King,” 77–78.
90. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 57(2)-58(1). Also see 61(1).
91. Ibid., 98(2)-99(1).
92. Coffey Politics, Religion, and the British Revolutions, 164.
93. Ibid., 168.
94. Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation Against the Pretended Liberty of Conscience (London: Printed by RI. for Andrew Crook, 1649), 404–5.
95. Ibid., 321. Rutherford also refers to Piscator who said that the prince is called the keeper of both Tables of the Law “by our Divines,” and therefore the magistrate is to vindicate God’s glory in both (ibid).
96. Ibid., 218.
97. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 142(1). Also see 215(2).
98. W, I: 27(CI21).
99. W, III: 256(CG2.3).
100. Ibid.
101. W, III: 554(Dn).
102. W, III: 256(CG2.3).
103. W, VI: 25(CD).
104. W, XVI: 125(CD1.27).
105. W, XIV: 113(CD1.4).
106. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, 50.
107. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 133(2).
108. Ibid. Also see 200(1)-200(2).
109. J. H. M. Salmon, The French Religious Wars in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 87.
110. See W ,VII: 361–63(1D6).
111. Milton s clear purpose is to assert the people s common rights against the unrighteous despotism of kings—and this not out of hatred of kings, but of tyrants” (W, VII: 551[1D12]).
112. W, VII: 361–63(1D6). Because, Milton writes, "God Himself tells us that he abhors all fellowship with wicked princes for the very reason that under pretence of royal right they create misery and vexation for their subjects” (W ,VII: 95[1D2]).
113. W, VII: 359–61(1D6).
114. See W, VII: 359(1D6). Similarly according to Rutherford, the safety (together with justice, peace, lives, and liberties) of the people resorted under the secular ends of the office of the ruler, concerning the common good of the people (Coffey Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 169).
115. W, V: 14(TE). Also see W, VII: 177(1D3), W, VII: 359(1D6), and W, V: 130(E).
116. W, VII: 113(1D2).
117. W, V: 130(E).
118. Ibid.
119. W, VII: 175–77(1D3). Milton’s political theory contains two important elements: on the one hand, the eminent compatibility between God and the rule of the wise and virtuous; on the other hand, the incompatibility between God and other forms of rule, especially between God and tyranny: “The tyrant is the natural enemy of those who follow God and who seek to guide their conduct by the use of their God-given faculty of reason, and not according to the tyrant’s arbitrary will” (Sanderson, Philosophical Basis of the English Civil War, 137).
120. W, VII: 151–53(1D3).
121. Barker, Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 150.
122. W, IV: 119(T).
123. See W, V: 12 et seq.(TE). Having stated the basic principle that tyranny absolves the people from obedience to their rulers, Milton, in Eikonoklastes (1649), reflects on the implications of the king’s commitment to justice by means of the coronation oath, see W, V: 133–38(E). The main arguments in this tract are directed as a response to the pamphlet Eikon Basilike, attributed to Charles I and published immediately after his execution on 30 January 1649: Firstly, the oath binding the king to performance of his trust ought in reason to contain the sum of what his chief trust and office is, W, V: 133(E). Secondly, oaths of allegiance and supremacy are not sworn to the person of the king or magistrate, but to his authority, conditionally granted him “in Law and under Law, and under Oath also for the Kingdoms good” (W, V: 300[E]).
124. Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 143(1). See 173(1)-173(2) and 180(2).
125. Ibid., 178(2). See 180(2), where Rutherford mentions the example of the prophet Elijah’s support in resisting the idolaters, the idolatrous kingship not doing anything about the idolatry. Also see 182(1).
126. Ibid., 222(2). Rutherford goes on to argue that the Belgic Confession of Faith and the Scriptures state that it is (also) the duty of the inferior magistrates to “relieve the oppressed, to use the sword against murdering papists and Irish rebels and destroying cavaliers; for, shall it be a good plea in the day of Christ to say, ‘Lord Jesus, we would have used thy sword against bloody murderers if thy anointed, the king, had not commanded us to obey a mortal king rather than the King of ages, and to execute no judgment for the oppressed, because he judged them faithful catholic subjects”’ (ibid).
127. Ibid., 55(2).
128. See Brian Horne, “Human Sin and Human Freedom: A Reading of Milton’s Areopagitica,” in God and Freedom (ed. Colin E. Gunton; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 16–17. This is reminiscent of Buchanan who supported the medieval belief in the natural law, the “light divinely infused in our souls,” to which reason is our unswerving guide. When God created man “he also created in his spirit a light by which he distinguishes between good and evil. Some call this ability nature, and others the law of nature. I regard it as truly divine” (see F. Oakley, “On the Road from Constance to 1688: The Political Thought of John Major and George Buchanan,” Journal of British Studies 1 [1962]: 21).
129. Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 216. According to Rutherford, man’s epistemic faculties had been seriously damaged by the Fall, and his original knowledge of morality and religion was now sadly dimmed, hence the need for special revelation, the Decalogue, and the rest of Scripture: “Had [man’s] conscience been a faithful register,” Rutherford argued, “there should have been no need of a written Bible” (ibid., 154).
130. Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 133.
131. See Rutherford, Lex, Rex, esp. 12(2), 14(2), 21(1)-21(2), 22(2)-23(1), 33(1), 38(1), 174(1)-174(2), and 229(2). Also see 6(1), 7(1), 9(2), 12(1), 26(1)-26(2), 38(2), 57(2), and 202(2).
132. See Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, 183.
133. See Rutherford, Lex, Rex, 30(1), 36(2), 141(2), and 152(2)-153(1).
134. ‘Notes on Secular Authority from the Bible to Milton," cited 16 November 2003. Online:http://www.michael/bryson.miltonweb/milton03.html.
135. Coffey Politics, Religion and theBritish Revolution, 153.
136. Ibid.
137. Ibid., 155.
138. Ibid.
139. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, 45.
140. Ibid.
141. The Philosophy and Method of the Law (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962).