For over twenty years of his life, Samuel Rutherford was a professor of divinity. Altogether he published eight theological works – three of them in Latin – amounting to almost 4,000 printed pages. He was the most distinguished theologian among the Scottish Covenanters, with an international reputation as a champion of Reformed orthodoxy. Throughout his life he saw that orthodoxy threatened by two equal and opposite errors – Arminianism and Antinomianism – and he produced extensive polemical refutations of both positions. Given the range and depth of his output, it is inevitable that this chapter will leave much untouched. The detailed arguments of Rutherford's Latin works against Arminianism, in particular, require a more extended treatment. However, what we can provide here is a general overview of Rutherford's theology. We shall begin with a brief look at the historiography.

Surprising as it may seem to the outside observer, the subject of early modern Reformed theology has generated intense debate among historians and theologians in recent years. The literature on the topic is now very extensive indeed, and can be thoroughly bewildering. However, we can begin to make sense of it when we understand the reasons why three distinct groups of scholars have thought this subject worthy of their attention.

In the first place, a number of secular historians and sociologists have studied Calvinist theology because they have suspected that it was connected in some way or other with the process of modernisation.