Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

Think it not hard if you get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but himself.

You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.

The loss of life is gain to you. If Christ Jesus be the period, the end, and lodging home, at the end of your journey, there is no fear; ye go to a friend.

Quote from Samuel Rutherford

Because the Churches take not care, that Ministers be savoury and gracious; from Steermen all Apostasie and rottenness begin. O if the Lord would arise and purge his House in Scotland! As for Church-members, they ought to be holy; and though all baptized be actu primo members, yet such as remain habitually ignorant after admonition, are to be cast out, and though they be not cast out certainly, as paralytick or rottened members cannot discharge the functions of life: So those that are scandalous, ignorant, malignant, unsound in faith, lose their rights of Suffrages in election of Officers, and are to be debarred from the Seals. Nor can we defend our sinful practise in this: it were our wisdom to repent of our taking in the Malignant party, who shed the blood of the people of God, and obstructed the work of God, into places of Trust in the Church State, and the Army, contrary to our Covenants, they continuing still Enemies.

So, if the king be a living law by office, and the law put in execution which God hath commanded, then, as the moral law is by divine institution, so must the officer of God be, who is the keeper , preserver, and avenger of God's law.

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"

...the argument presupposeth that royal power and fatherly power is one and the same in nature, whereas they differ in nature, and are only one by analogy and proportion; for so pastors of the Word are called fathers, I Cor. iv. 15, it will not follow, that once a pastor, evermore a pastor; and if therefore pastors turn wolves, and by heretical doctrine corrupt the flock, they cannot be cast out of the church.

Samuel Rutherford, Scottish reformer

...when the king defendeth not true religion, but presseth upon the people a false and idolatrouse religion, in that they are not under the king, but are presumed to have the power in themselves, as if they had not appointed any king at all; as if we presume the body had given to the right hand a power to ward off strokes and to defend the body; if the right hand should by a palsy, or some other disease, become impotent, and be witheredup, when ill is coming on the body, it is presumed that the power of defence is recurred to the left hand, and to the rest of the body to defend itself in this case as if the body had no right hand, and had never communicated any power to the right hand.

Samuel Rutherford, Scottish reformer

A king is a special gift from God, given to feed and defend the people of God, that they may lead a godly and peaceable life under him,  (Psalm lxxviii. 71, 72; 1 Tim. ii. 2;)

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"

If a nation seeth that aristocratical government is better than monarchy, that the sequels of such a monarchy is bloody, destructive, tyrannous; that the monarchy compelleth the free subjects to Mohamedanism, to gross idolatry, they cannot, by the divine bond of any oath, captive their natural freedom, which is to choose a government and governors for their safety, and for a peaceable and godly life;

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"

Tyranny being a work of Satan, is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from God: the power that is, must be from God; the magistrate, as magistrate, is good in nature of office, and the intrinsic end of his office, (Rom. xiii. 4) for he is the minister of God for thy good; and, therefore, a power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power; and is no more from God, but from sinful nature and the old serpent, than a license to sin.

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"

But the first mould of a king (Deut. xvii.) is by election.

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"

Inferior judges are no less esentially judges, and the immediate vicars of God, than the king.  Those who judge in the room of God, and exercise the judgment of God, are essentially judges and deputies of God, as well as the king; but inferior judges are such, therefore the proposition is clear.  The formal reason, why the king is univocally and essentially a judge, is, because the king's throne is the Lord's throne;

Samuel Rutherford from "Lex, Rex"