LexRex1644

John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister and president of what is now Princeton University, was the only pastor to sign the Declaration of Independence.... This linkage of Christian thinking and the concepts of government were not incidental but fundamental. John Witherspoon knew and stood consciously in the stream of Samuel Rutherford, a Scotsman who lived from 1600-1661 and who wrote Lex Rex in 1644. Lex Rex means law is king―a phrase that was absolutely earthshaking. Prior to that it had been rex lex, the king is law.... Think of this great flaming phrase: “certain inalienable rights,” Who gives the rights? The state? Then they are not inalienable because the state can change them and take them away. Where do the rights come from? They understood that they were founding the country upon the concept that goes back into the Judeo-Christian thinking that there is Someone there who gave the inalienable rights.

(From: Foundations for Faith and Freedom, by Francis A. Schaeffer)