Rutherford's admirers have focused so intently on the pious pastor of Anwoth that they have forgotten his scholarly output. Yet a modern historian who concentrated on Rutherford's controversial writings at the expense of his devotional letters and sermons would be making an equally great mistake. For Rutherford the Puritan pastor is a fascinating figure, a man with an intense spirituality, close friendships with godly women, and an extraordinary way with language. By examining these features of his life and work we can shed new light on the role of women within the Puritan movement, the style of Puritan preaching and the relationship between Puritanism and popular culture. I will begin with an exposition of Rutherford's own spirituality.

A SPIRITUALITY OF PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

To some readers the exotic (and erotic) imagery of Rutherford's Letters has marked him out as a rare example of that paradoxical phenomenon, the Presbyterian mystic. As we shall see, mysticism is perhaps not the best term to apply to Rutherford, and he would no doubt be horrified to find himself anthologised with Jacob Boehme, George Fox, Goethe and Virginia Woolf. Nevertheless, it is striking to find in an intolerant seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterian, passages that would seem more at home in the works of St Bernard or St Teresa.

Despite its obvious interest, Rutherford's spirituality has been a neglected feature of seventeenth-century Scottish Calvinism.