Nothing certain is known as to his parentage, but he belonged to the same line as the Roxburghs of Hunthill (from whom Sir Walter Scott was descended)[5] and his father is believed to have been a farmer or miller.

Mainly for his publication of a work against Arminianism he was again accused in 1636 by Bishop Sydserff, and after proceedings at Wigtown, was cited before the Commission and prohibited, 27 July, from exercising ministerial office, and ordered to reside in Aberdeen during the King's pleasure.

In 1643 he was appointed one of the four main Commissioners of the Church of Scotland to the Westminster Assembly and preached several times before Parliament, remaining in London for four years.

After the Restoration he was one of the first marked out for persecution: his work Lex Rex was ordered by the Committee of Estates to be burnt at the Crosses of Edinburgh and St Andrews by the hand of the common hangman, while the "Drunken Parliament" deprived him of all his offices[6] and voted that he not be permitted to die in the college.

[14] One of the classical figures of the Church of Scotland, Rutherford's influence during his lifetime, as scholar, preacher, and writer, was profound and wide, and after his death his name received a popular canonisation which it retains to this day.

Among his last words were: "Glory shines in Immanuel's Land," on which Mrs Anne Boss Cousin founded her hymn, "The Sands of Time are sinking."

There is also a monument to Rutherford, a Category B listed granite obelisk erected in 1842 on the hilltop overlooking his former parish at Anwoth, in the village of Gatehouse of Fleet, southwest Scotland.

[17][page needed][18] Andrew Thomson, a Scottish minister, in a 19th-century biography observed "the letters flash upon the reader with original thoughts and abound in lofty feeling clothed in the radiant garb of imagination in which there is everything of poetry but the form.

'[20] Rutherford was also known for other spiritual and devotional works, such as Christ Dying and drawing Sinners to Himself, "The Trial and Triumph of Faith".

[22] After the Restoration, it was burned at Edinburgh and St. Andrews by the hand of the common hangman, and after his death it was put on the University of Oxford's list of prohibited books.

"[24] It raised the ire of John Milton, who named Rutherford in his sonnet on the forcers of conscience in the Long Parliament.

New England Congregationalists responding to Rutherford included not only Thomas Hooker but also John Cotton and Richard Mather.