Abstract. Francis Schaeffer, in his work The Christian Manifesto, suggests that John
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.