Samuel Rutherford’s “Directory.” \

A REFLEX† UPON A MAN’S MIS-SPENT LIFE,
BACKED WITH CHALLENGES.

By SAMUEL RUTHERFURD.

[From an Old Manuscript].

NOTE.

A STRAY volume of Seventeenth Century Manuscripts, once the possession of Robert Wodrow, coming to my hands, I was delighted to find among the tracts that ‘Directory of Life’ of which Rutherford wrote a brief transcript to John Fleming, Bailie of Leith, in March 1637. Comparison with the letter to Fleming (No. CLIX. Edit. 1891) leaves no doubt that the manuscript is that ‘directory’ which Rutherford “would have been at” himself, but which he never finished to his satisfaction. It is something after the passing of little short of three centuries to find such a Rule of Christian living as Rutherford’s own experience produced.

JOHN FLEMING, Bailie of Leith, was an honest man; honest not only with his neighbours but with his own heart also, and Fleming had begun to fear that all was not so well with his heart as should be; when he came at night to try the actions of the past day,

*The MS. of this Directory came into the possession of the late Rev. John Sturrock, M.A., Edinburgh, who sent it to the editor of the Original Secession Magazine. It was printed in the pages of this Magazine.—Editor.

†“It is a reflex act to know your own acts of faith . . . reflex acts are more rare and difficult because more spiritual than direct acts.”

—Rutherford’s Sermon to the House of Lords (1645) p. 48.

and to review his thoughts and words, and, generally, his whole walk and conversation during that day, his heart sent out many challenges to him. It is true, he had made conscience of everything; had defrauded no man, wronged no man; he had begun the day with God’s Word and with prayer; so, too, had he closed it; he had remembered God throughout the day as, at least, beholding him. Yet now as he lay upon his bed with unsleeping eyes he had to confess that his heart was not in all. It seemed to him now as if another conscience were at work, the conscience that as with flaming sword guarded the heart and its love. Were not all his actions but moral at best? he had walked straitly, dealt justly in all his trafficking, prayed to God, and given Him thanks; but for what end? What good thing had he done that day in the doing of which his heart had warmed, or his eye grown tender? He had given an alms, indeed, but it was but the passing of a plack, and the thought which he but faintly put from him then was his reward. That night even his stern outward conscience gave him no ‘well done’ for that.

So, lying there, his thoughts went back to old and difficult days when he was a younger man by fifteen years. He could not think that his spiritual life had grown greatly since then. He remembered old meetings by night in Edinburgh; suppers in Barbara Mein’s house, or at Bartholomew Fleming’s, his brother, or at Apothecary Hamilton’s, suppers which were as communions, for, on occasion, an ‘honest minister’ would be present, and with the breaking of the bread there might be an opening of the Word. He remembered how their meetings had been watched by the authorities, and some of them who met had been brought before the Council and fined and imprisoned; how he himself was summoned to appear, and how he had refused to prepare any defence, trusting that when he stood before his judges the right word would be given him. And it was; for when the Chancellor put the question of his attendance at conventicles, he had asked simply, ‘What is a conventicle?’ and being told that it was a private meeting for prayer and religious exercise held during the hours of public worship, he had breathed freely: if that were

so, then he had never been at a conventicle. Yet, lest that were a mere evasion which conscience would turn against him later, he was quick to say: “I have been, I confess, at supper sundrie times with friends and neighbours; and when we could have the occasion of some honest minister, we used to have the prayer said before or after supper, a chapter read, and sometimes some lessons given us upon it.”* ‘Honest man,’ the Chancellor had replied, not without feeling, ‘I wish all the town were like you.’ As all that came up before Fleming on this night of judgment, there did not come up with it the pleasure he used to feel when telling the story again and again, but instead, a feeling of sadness that these days were not as then. And now his mind beheld those gatherings and the remembered faces. There was young Samuel Rutherford, a gracious lad, who had been made regent of Humanity in the College, and had soon fallen under the ill-will of the Principal. He had resigned on a monstrous charge being made against him and had pursued the Divinity Course, and became a great servant of Christ in His Gospel. He was confined now within Aberdeen, silenced by the prelates from preaching. But how many even of Fleming’s own friends were blessing God for that silencing, since out of that prison flowed such letters of counsel and help and spiritual guidance and experience as never were since the days of Paul himself.

All that night and late into the morning Fleming lay wakeful, composing in his active mind a letter which he should write to Rutherford in Aberdeen, not merely of sympathy such as he had written a few months before, but to lay bare before him all this trouble of heart, and for their old friendship’s sake to obtain from him some helps, some ‘directory’ of life by which he might have his conversation in heaven even here. And John Fleming’s business stood still all the next day until he had penned the letter he had framed.

SAMUEL RUTHERFURD had passed through deep waters since his young days in Edinburgh, but he had not sunk in them. He had

*Calderwood, Hist. (Wod. Soc.) vii. 620, 621.

won through, and made good the promise of his early years; but he did not look back on past days as better days than these. In comparison with these days, tongue-bound (although not pen-bound) as he was, all that went before appeared to him as but the record of a mis-spent life. For he, too, sitting by his borrowed fire on this March night in 1637, was under judgment; but the man arraigned was Rutherford of Anwoth, and conscience condemned him that when opportunity was his he let slip the golden time. To him, also, in his lonely ‘prison’ in Aberdeen, his heart sent forth challenges. The hardest thing of all for a man (as Rutherford knew) was to know his own heart. This he knew, that “As physically, so morally, the heart is the man: the good heart, the good man; the evil heart, the evil man . . . God acteth the noon-day sun in every heart—the man himself is without, and God within.”* So there was a night (and many nights) in Aberdeen when Rutherford stood with head bowed without, while God within searched his heart, and conscience, God’s sergeant, read out his accusation. And the wonder was that of all he heard there was no new thing.

Had not the shady walks of Anwoth and their immemorial trees that preached the littleness of a man’s life, and still foretold its everlastingness; and the wide moors under the skies that spoke of desolation, and with the same voice of the vastness and nearness of God; so that turn which way he might, he might rise from the sights of vanity to thoughts of the eternal—had not all these witnessed before such a judgment as was passing now? and he had found that there was nothing in nature or man that had not a voice to speak of God, and how, by means of all things, “good thoughts might be attained unto.”

He remembered, this night, how he had gone back to his manse after such walks and communings, and had written down some of the lessons he had learned; the ‘challenges’ his heart had met withal, the ‘rules’ he would live by henceforth that every day

*Covenant of Grace, p. 46.

might be as this day, and better than it; and, since God leaves no man in His debt, nor leaves him uncomforted, he added a note of the ‘benefits’ he had received. He remembered, too, how as his life progressed under his ‘directory,’ examples and experiences grew and his papers in which he wrote all down, multiplied, and the thought had come to him that such a guide might be useful to others, the hearts of all men being fashioned alike; and he made a fair copy of his ‘challenges,’ ‘rules,’ and ‘benefits,’ drawing them into a method of Christian life.

But grey days would come again, and dark days, and days when he forgot . . . and his papers were laid aside, and himself turned to other plans. Then came the charge of the High Commission, and the day of his sentence and his silencing; and he remembered . . . “O my guiltiness,” (he wrote that night to the Lady Culross), “the follies of my youth, the neglects in my calling . . . If I were free of challenges, and a High Commission within my soul! . . . .”

And there was a night at Anwoth when he gathered together the papers he would take with him to the place of his banishment; and his hands found the laid-by ‘directory.’ Over it he wrote, “A reflex upon a man’s mis-spent life, backed by challenges.” It lay at his hand in that little room in Aberdeen when John Fleming’s letter came seeking help.

“I wish,” he wrote in reply to Fleming, “that I could satisfy your desire in drawing up and framing for you a Christian directory. But the learned have done it before me . . . Notwithstanding I shall show you what I would have been at myself, howbeit I came always short of my purpose.” So he named certain of his ‘rules’ to Fleming, and he told him of the ‘challenges’ he himself had met withal, and still met with; and he told him of the ‘benefits’ he had found in this way of life. But he kept for himself that title he had put upon his paper: that was between himself and his Master.

CHALLENGES.

1. For not referring all to God as the last end. That we do not eat, drink, sleep, journey, speak, and think for God but still are biassed with our own selfish respects, putting them oftenest in God’s place.

2. That we have not benefited with good company, and have complied too much with the profanest sort; not reproving the blaspheming of God’s Name, but rather being silent witness of their loose carriage.

3. That the troubles of Zion now in her pangs of birth, have not affected us, but rather that days of humiliation in her behalf have been slighted, and have been rather matter of aggravation than of lightening of her burden. In not studying particular reformation: and in forgetting bypast experiences, mercies, deliverances.

4. That in reading the life of Paul, David, and such like, and the life of many holy professors hath not humbled us, nor convinced us of our shortcoming, nor have we laboured to imitate them, having that same stream of God’s free grace current to us, which maketh us the more guilty in refusing, or rather opposing it.

5. That unrepented sins of youth are not looked into, whereas if they were recent in our hearts it would be a means to make us more humble.

6. That sudden stirrings to pride, lust, revenge, and love to riches and honours were not resisted and mourned for: and that such thoughts as these got best room and entertainment in our corrupt hearts that no place is left for better.

7. That charity to God’s saints hath been both rigid and cold, and small hopes of enlargement as yet.

8. That experience of God’s mercies which after prayer He hath granted hath been forgotten. That in new troubles we have had so often our faith to seek, as if we were to begin at A B C, as if we had an idol god to deal withal.

9. That in great troubles we have cherished false reports of Christ’s love, and misbelieved Him in His chastising and when the event hath been mercy; and have not been so busy to vindicate God’s glory from the aspersions of the enemies of truth both in public and private.

10. Nothing should so weight our souls as that we have never so wrestled in prayer with God as it became His saints, but have easily contented us with the bare form without the power of His Spirit, still living to the world and dead unto Christ, cherishing the relics of Adam and quenching the light of God’s Spirit, easily succumbing to a temptation, and trampling upon the means of grace.

11. That the Lord’s dealings with thee upon body or mind have not wrought the effects, and have done nothing but extorted vows of new obedience which have blown away like chaff before the wind; and no sooner hast thou come out of the furnace of God’s affliction but thou becomest like a deceitful bow, and turnest with the dog to his vomit again.

12. That the practice of my duty was so narrow and short, not answering the breadth and length of my light, and what I have weakly done was but to stop the mouth of a natural conscience, and have been contented only with mints* in place of real performances.

13. That we have not been so much taken up with the thought of death, and that before this cottage of clay be dissolved and the pins of this tabernacle be loosed, we may be sure of a place of habitation whither to go before our flitting, and before we go hence and be no more.

14. That the body and burden of sin hath not wearied us, the fear of hell affrighted us, the joys of heaven allured us to be with Christ which is best of all; and the profound and unsearchable thoughts of Eternity to prepare us to enter that strait gate.

*mints, attempts.

1. That we have not made use of the grace, ability and opportunity to bring others home to Christ, neither have we ourselves walked in the light that the Lord hath enlightened us withal, neither hath the Lord’s grace brought forth thankfulness in us.

2. That we were not so ready to smother thoughts at their infancy as to cherish them, till they have broken out to scandalous vices, whereas in all exercises good thoughts may be attained unto.

3. That we have not tendered the growth of grace by daily trying wherein we have come short, and wherein we have made progress, but only contented ourselves to live among the means without profiting, yea even the means of Sabbath, ordinances, sacraments, fastings, humiliations, standing to the points of our covenant, have been perfunctoriously abused: and we have rested upon the outward duties of formality, as prayer morning and evening, without any heart-work within, but giving place for wandering thoughts in suchlike exercises.

SOME HELPS FOR A MORE EXACT AND CLOSE WALKING WITH GOD, FRAMED BY A DIRECTORY OF LIFE.

1. That hours of the day, more or less, be given to read God’s Word, and to prayer, preferring it to the greatest affairs and employments of the man’s calling though ye spend the shortest time therein; and let the first fruits of the morning thoughts smell of such religious duties as excluding all else till they have taken possession.

2. In the midst of worldly employments some thoughts of sin, judgment, death, eternity, and God’s free love would be; with a word or two of prayer to God, or, at least, by ejaculation.

3. Not to grudge howbeit ye come from prayer without sense, or downcasting, or sense of guiltiness, but let such sharpen your appetite for another hearing, and not resting on what is done.

4. That the Lord’s Day from morning till night be spent always in private or public worship, even to the taking account

of smallest thoughts, it being set apart from the rest of the days of the week for the Lord’s worship only, as not being lawful to have our own thoughts.

1. That wandering and idle thoughts be observed and avoided as being the harbingers of unsavoury speeches, the ushers to profane actions.

2. Beware of wandering of heart in private and public prayer to God; as in private to make your hearts go alongst with your tongues, so in public with hearty joining, as if ye felt the present necessity pressing you to it; and join in praises with a feeling heart proceeding from a principle of love, to exalt His glory.

3. That all discovered and revealed sins that are against the conscience be eschewed as most dangerous preparatives to hardness of heart; and still to be governed by conscience, not it by thee.

4. That in dealing with men our faith and truth in covenants, in trafficking, sincerity, conscience of idle words, and our lying be regarded; and our carriage such, as they shall speak honourably of our sweet Master; not in any wise wronging our profession, but carrying a life answerable to the outward show, and that, not in appearance but in effect we may be Christians indeed.

5. To haunt and frequent the company of those most with whom the soul may be most benefited, and cast off all discourses to gather spiritual uses, striving to edify one another in mutual confidence, cherishing heavenly thoughts, sympathizing with the sufferings of our mother the Church, and in all our prayers to hold up her condition, and the condition one of another.

6. To eschew the company of the profane and of such as are without, except that it be to the bringing them into the knowledge of Christ by convincing their judgments, and in no wise abstaining to reprehend their erroneous vices, as choosing rather to incur their wrath than God’s glory to suffer in the least measure; and better thou suffer vindicating His cause than that thou be guilty by participating in dishonouring sin: for what thou sufferest in that, thou sufferest as a member of Christ.

7. Not to content thyself with morning and evening reading of God’s Word and sacrifices of prayer: but what is read or heard by any of God’s people to digest by meditation and to turn it over in praises oft-times a day, as occasion shall proffer, not sparing thy most important affairs.

8. Every night to call thy thoughts, words, and actions to a strict account. See wherein thou hast omitted, gone back, stood still, or come short, and making, with sorrow, promise and purpose to amend what hath been amiss, that it being thy sole practice it may possess thy night-dreams, and waken with a desire to pray and praise.

9. In afflictions or crosses, either upon body or mind or friends, thou mayst oft study submission in acknowledging nothing to fall out by accident, but by an over-ruling Providence, and gather sweetness out of bitterest portions, as serving to make thee more heavenward, and not to trail, but bear, Christ’s cross cheerfully.

10. To eschew passion, envy, hatred, desire of revenge, even of such as persecute the truth; for we often mix our zeal with our wild-fire; carrying charitable thoughts of those that are without: not being a slave, but commanding thy passion, and let it most out against thine own corruption.

11. Daily trying thy growth in grace, which if thou see not grow daily sensibly yet by this [trial] thou must find [growth] insensibly, otherwise doubt thyself. For as standing water corrupteth, so grace not growing must decay, and so thou come short of thy mark.

12. When idle thoughts enter thy heart suppress them quickly, for they are like the thief that will open the door to the rest to break in till they be the strong man, and then fall to action which cannot be so easily resisted. So that it is best to smother it in the birth before it come to its infancy, and far more before they come to full strength that hardly they can be rooted up.

13. Not to content thyself with flashes of good resolutions before or after the Sacrament, or in the heat of public or private

ordinances, which are suddenly choked, which are like the seed among the corn, by spending their life in their birth. Neither be discouraged with the clouds of God’s absence but rather judge thyself which occasioneth it, still lying patiently, not idly, under the cloud, till He break forth with the beams of His countenance to enlighten thy deserted but not rejected condition.

1. If possibly thou canst write every thought of the day both good and bad, and that thou mayest make more conscience of them, summon them before thee at night to be censured according to their demerits, persuading thyself to be so strictly examined before God’s tribunal in the day of the Lord.

2. Not to let Idol-self have such a reigning power in thee, but rather discourt with it that Christ may take possession: for to be less thine own is to be more His, which oblidgeth thee to study more, mortification and the new man.

3. To strive against doubting, and if thou want feeling of faith to complain bitterly for the want of it, and seek out where the sin lieth that hindereth it. And use all means whereby thou canst get the Lord’s countenance, and no less to entertain it.

A CHRISTIAN COURSE FOR WAYS OF BENEFITING.

1. In time of journeying, riding, or walking, to be taken up with high and excellent thoughts of Christ’s free grace, with base thoughts of thyself: of death, eternity, the joys of heaven; how unspeakable the pains of hell are, and how intolerable; and after by giving thyself to some ejaculations or short prayer.

2. By abstinence, fasting, humiliation, frequent prayer, setting days apart for suchlike worship.

3. By frequenting the society of the saints; mutual edification, exhortation, searching out of the impediments of grace, and scruples within thyself, seeking to have them resolved by others; by holding up one another’s condition; and by making an errand to God for them, thou mayest get something for thyself.

4. To be certainly persuaded with thyself that God heareth prayers, yea, even of smallest importance: and not to be discouraged with a refusal if lawfully put up: and assure thyself

that if He grant not the thing that thou askest He will grant thee as good, and that which is better for thee than that which thou askest.

1. Be not discouraged to march under the banner of Christ though thou mayest run counter with foul footsteps, not standing to set thy face against the wind for His cause though thou shouldest meet with many calumnies, reproaches, nicknames; comforting thyself that thy Kingdom is not of this world: but be sure always to take no bigger coat of profession than thou art able to fill.

2. By making conscience of atheistical thoughts, not questioning if there be a God or heaven which troubleth the best. And set before thine eyes the all-sufficient omnipotence, omniscience, of an eternal God who is not only privy to thy words and actions but to thy very thoughts, that it may be an awband* above thy head.

3. By studying daily a growth of grace, and means sought to further it; shortcoming and falling from thy first love mourned for; the estate of our Mother the Church always in remembrance, sympathizing with her members, fellow-feeling.

4. By studying all means for advancing God’s glory, letting it always carry the pre-eminency before thine own particular. By making thy calling and election sure hereaway, carrying a preparatory disposition for the day of the Lord’s visitation, and not resting on means only.

5. When thou art merry, give thyself to Hymns and Songs; and in a sad condition to pour out thine heart to Him as the only cheerer up of hearts, and not Saul-like by seeking unlawful means.

6. By spiritually applying all mercies, deliveries, visitations, upon body, mind, or friends, and out of bitterest portions to

*“Christ by His covenant layeth awe of grace upon us.”—Influences of the Life of Grace (1659), p. 2. “The awe of heaven hath a stronger impression than the terror and awe of hell.”—Covenant of Grace (1655), p. 218.

drink sweetest draughts. And suffer nothing to escape without spiritual use even in most natural and profane objects.

1. By not complying with an erroneous conscience, and not shutting thine eye to greater light but rather to seek after it; and not shifting away of convictions, but to give conscience a hearing, not suffering it to be hoodwinked, but let it have its full strength to make way for conviction. And not to rest here only: but using the means of knowledge till thou attain unto the power and practice of religion, to grow therein. And being converted, strengthen thy brethren.

2. By setting before thine eyes the strictest professors, the closest walkers with God, by way of imitation: by striving to reform the vices of those that are without. In admiring and blessing the Lord’s free grace in bestowing a greater measure upon thee who by black Nature was an imp of the same stock; and what thou hast gotten bestow it to His glory who gave thee anything beyond thy desert.