1 WAS SAMUEL RUTHERFORD A SOURCE FOR JOHN LOCKE’S POLITICAL THEORIES?

Locke was dependent upon Samuel Rutherford for his political theories. He writes, “…while Locke had secularized Lex Rex he had drawn heavily from it, ” and goes on to assure the reader that, “We are not reading back into history what was not there ” (p. 32). Is Schaeffer’s assertion true? Did Locke draw heavily from Rutherford’s Lex Rex? This article examines John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex, and discovers that Schaeffer’s assertion does not meet the burden of proof, and he was, in fact, guilty of reading back into history what was not there. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.1 These eighteenth-century words from the Declaration of Independence formed the bedrock upon which the government of the United States rests. They also justified the use of force during the American Revolutionary War. In the twentieth-century, evangelical Christian author, Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), similarly encouraged civil disobedience with the provocative statement, “at a certain point there is not only the right