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BOSTON, THOMAS, an
eminent doctrinal writer, was born in the town of Dunse, March 7th, 1676,
and received the rudiments of his education at his native town, under a
woman who kept a school in his father’s house, and afterwards under Mr
James Bullerwill, who taught what is called the grammar school. His father
was a nonconformist, and, being imprisoned for his recusancy, retained the
subject of this memoir in prison along with him, for the sake of company;
which, notwithstanding his youth, seems to have made a lasting impression
on the memory of young Boston. Whether the old man was brought at length
to conform, we have not been able to learn; but during his early years, Mr
Boston informs us that he was a regular attendant at church, "where
he heard those of the episcopal way, that being then the national
establishment." He was then, as he informs us, living without God in
the world, and unconcerned about the state of his soul. Toward the end of
summer, 1687, upon the coming out of king James’s indulgence, his father
carried him to a presbyterian meeting at Whitsome, where he heard the Rev.
Mr Henry Erskine, who, before the Restoration, was minister of Cornhill,
and father to the afterwards celebrated Messrs Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine.
It was through the ministrations of this celebrated preacher, that Boston
was first brought to think seriously about the state of his soul, being
then going in the twelfth year of his age. After this he went back no more
to the church till the curates were expelled, with whom, it was the
general report of the country, no one remained after he became serious and
in earnest about the salvation of his soul.—While at the grammar school,
he formed an intimacy with two boys, Thomas Trotter and Patrick Gillies,
who regularly met with him, at stated times, in a chamber of his father’s
house, for reading the Scriptures, religious conference, and social
prayer, "whereby," he says, "they had some advantage, both
in point of knowledge and tenderness." Mr Boston made a rapid
progress at the school, and before he left it, which was in the harvest of
1689, had gone through all the books commonly taught in such seminaries,
and had even begun the Greek, in which language he had read part of John’s
gospel, Luke, and the Acts of the apostles, though he was then but in his
fourteenth year. After leaving the grammar school, two years elapsed
before he proceeded farther in his studies, his father being doubtful if
he was able to defray the expense. This led to several attempts at getting
him into a gratuitous course at the university, none of which had any
success. In the mean time he was partly employed in the composing and
transcribing law papers by a Mr Cockburn, a public notary, from which he
admits that he derived great benefit in after life. All his plans for a
gratuitous academical course having failed, and his father having resolved
to strain every nerve to carry him through the classes, he entered the
university of Edinburgh as a student of Greek, December 1st, 1691, and
studied for three successive sessions. He took out his laureation in the
summer of 1694, when his whole expenses for fees and maintenance, were
found to amount to one hundred and twenty eight pounds, fifteen shillings
and eight pence, Scots money, less than eleven pounds sterling. That same
summer he had the bursary of the presbytery of Dunse conferred on him as a
student of theology, and in the month of January, 1695, entered, the
theological class in the college of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr George
Campbell, "a man," says Boston, "of great learning, but
excessively modest, undervaluing himself, and much valuing the tolerable
performances of his students. During this Session, the only one Boston
appears to have regularly attended in divinity, he also for a time
attended the Hebrew class, taught by Mr Alexander Rule, but remarks that
he found no particular advantage from it. After returning from the
university, Mr Boston had different applications made to him, and made
various attempts to settle himself in a school, but with no good effect,
and in the spring of 1696, he accepted of an invitation from Lady
Mersington to superintend the education of her grand-child, Andrew
Fletcher of Aberlady, a boy of nine years of age, whose father having died
young his mother was married again to Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce of Kennet,
in Clackmannanshire. This he was then rather induced to undertake, because
the boy being in Edinburgh at the High School, it gave his preceptor the
power of waiting upon the divinity lectures in the college. In less than a
month, however, his pupil was taken home to Kennet, whither Boston
accompanied him, and never had another opportunity of attending the
college. In this situation Mr Boston continued for about a year, and
during that period was pressed, once and again, by the united presbyteries
of Stirling and Dumblane, to take license at a preacher, which, for
reasons not very obvious, he declined. In the month of March, 1697, he
returned to Dunse, and by his friend Mr Colden, minister of that place,
was induced to enter upon trials for license before the united
presbyteries of Dunse and Churnside, by which he was licensed as a
probationer in the Scottish church, June 15th, 1697. In this character Mr
Boston officiated, as opportunity offered, for two years and three months,
partly within the bounds of his native presbytery, and partly within the
bounds of the presbytery of Stirling. It was first proposed by his friends
of the presbytery of Dunse to settle him in the parish of Foulden, the
episcopal incumbent of which was recently dead, and, on the first day he
officiated there, he gave a remarkably decisive proof of the firmness of
his principles. The episcopal precentor was, under the protection of the
great men of the parish, still continued. Boston had no freedom to employ
him without suitable acknowledgements, which, not being clothed with the
ministerial character, he could not take. On the morning, therefore, of
the first Sabbath, he told this official, that he would conduct the
psalmody himself, which accordingly he did, and there was nothing said
about it. In the parish of Foulden, however, he could not be settled
without the concurrence of Lord Ross, who had had a great hand in the
enormous oppressions of the preceding period. A personal application on
the part of the candidate was required by his lordship, and the presbytery
were urgent with Boston to make it, but to this he could not bring his
mind, so the project came to nothing. He was next proposed for the parish
of Abbey; but this scheme also was frustrated through the deceitfulness of
the principal heritor, who was a minister himself, and found means to
secure the other heritors, through whose influence he was inducted by the
presbytery to the living, though the parishioners were reclaiming, and
charging the presbytery with the blood of their souls, if they went on
with the settlement. "This," remarks Boston, "was the
ungospel-like way of settling, that even then prevailed in the case of
planting of churches, a way which I ever abhorred." After these
disappointments, Mr Boston removed to his former situation in
Clackmannanshire, where he remained for a twelvemonth, and in that time
was proposed for Carnock, for Clackmannan, and for Dollar, all of which
proposals were fruitless, and he returned to Dunse in the month of May,
1699.
Mr Boston had no sooner
returned to his native place, than he was proposed by his friend Mr Colden
for the parish of Simprin, where, after a great deal of hesitation on his
part, and some little chicanery on the part of the presbytery and the
people, he was ordained minister, September 21, 1699. In Simprin he
continued conscientiously performing the duties of his calling till the
year 1707, when, by synodical authority, he was transported to Ettrick.
His introduction to his new charge took place on the 1st of May that year,
the very day when the union between Scotland and England took effect; on
which account he remarks that he had frequent occasion to remember it, the
spirits of the people of Ettrick being imbittered on that event against
the ministers of the church, which was an occasion of much heaviness to
him, though he had never been for the union, but always against it from
the very beginning. Simprin, now united to the parish of Swinton, both of
which make a very small parish, contained only a few families, to whose
improvement he was able greatly to contribute with comparatively little
exertion, and the whole population seem to have been warmly attached to
him. Ettrick, on the contrary, is a parish extending nearly ten miles in
every direction, and required much labour to bring the people together in
public, or to come in contact with them at their own house. Several of
them, too, were society men or old dissenters, who had never joined the
Revolution church from what they supposed to be radical defects in her
constitution, as well as from much that had all along been offensive in
her general administration. Of her constitution, perhaps, Mr Boston was
not the warmest admirer, for he has told us in his memoirs, that, after
having studied the subject of baptism, he had little fondness for national
churches, strictly and properly so called, and of many parts of her
administration he has again and again expressed decided disapprobation;
but he had an undefined horror at separation, common to the greater part
of the presbyterians of that and the preceding generation, which led him
to regard almost every other ecclesiastical evil as trifling. Of course,
he was shocked beyond measure with the conduct of a few of the families of
Ettrick, who chose to adhere to Mr John Macmillan, or Mr John Hepburn, and
has left on record accounts of some interviews with them, shortly after
entering upon his charge, which, we have no hesitation in saying, bring
not only his candour, but his veracity, very strongly into question. He
was, however, a conscientious and diligent student, and had already made
great progress in the knowledge of the doctrine of grace, which seems to
have been but imperfectly understood by many very respectable men of that
period. In this he was greatly forwarded by a little book, "The
Marrow of Modern Divinity," which he found by accident in the house
of one of his parishioners in Simprin, and which had been brought from
England by a person who had been a soldier there in the time of the civil
wars. Of this book he says, "I found it to come close to the points I
was in quest of, and showed the consistency of those which I could not
reconcile before, so that I rejoiced in it as a light which the Lord had
seasonably struck up to me in my darkness." The works of Jerome
Zanchrius, Luther on the Galatians, and Beza’s Confession of Faith,
which he seems to have fallen in with at the same period, (that is, while
he was yet in Simprin, about the year 1700,) also contributed greatly to
the same end, and seems to have given a cast of singularity to his
sermons, which was highly relished, and which rendered them singularly
useful in promoting the growth of faith and holiness among his hearers. In
1702, he took the oath of allegiance to queen Anne, the sense of which, he
says, he endeavoured to keep on his heart, but never after took another
oath, whether of a public or private nature. He was a member of the first
general assembly held under that queen in the month of March, 1703, of
which, as the person that was supposed to be most acceptable to the
commissioner, the earl of Seafield, Mr George Meldrum was chosen
moderator. The declaration of the intrinsic power of the church was the
great object of the more faithful part of her ministers at this time; but
they were told by the leading party, that they already possessed it, and
that to make an act asserting what they possessed, was only to waste time.
While this very assembly, however, was in the midst of a discussion upon
an overture for preventing the marriage of Protestants with papists, the
commissioner, rising from his seat, dissolved the assembly in her majesty’s
name. "This having come," Boston remarks, "like a clap of
thunder, there were from all corners of the house protestations offered
against it, and for asserting the intrinsic power of the church,
with which," he adds, "I joined in: but the moderator, otherwise
a most grave and composed man, being in as much confusion as a schoolboy
when beaten, closed with prayer, and got away together with the clerk, so
that nothing was then got marked. This was one of the heaviest days,"
he continues, "that ever I saw, beholding a vain man trampling under
the privileges of Christ’s house, and others crouching under the burden;
and I could not but observe how Providence rebuked their shifting the act
to assert as above said, and baffled their design in the choice of the
moderator, never a moderator since the revolution to this day, so far as I
can guess, having been so ill-treated by a commissioner." This
reflection in his private journal, however, with the exception of an
inefficient speech in his own synod, appears to be all that ever Boston
undertook for the vindication of his church on this occasion. It does not
indeed appear that his feelings on this subject were either strong or
distinct, as we find him at Ettrick, in the month of January, 1708,
declaring that he had no scruple in observing a fast appointed by the
court, though he thought it a grievance that arose from the union, and the
taking away of the privy council. On this occasion he acknowledges that
many of his hearers broke off and left him, several of whom never
returned, but he justifies himself from the temper of the people, who, had
he yielded to them in this, would have dictated to him ever afterwards.
This same year he was again a member of the General Assembly, where
application was made by persons liable to have the abjuration oath imposed
upon them for an act declaring the judgment of the Assembly regarding it.
The Assembly refused to do any thing in this matter; which was regretted
by Mr Boston, and he states it as a just retribution which brought it to
ministers’ own doors in 1712, only four years afterwards. On this
occasion also he was in the Assembly, but whether as a spectator or a
member he does not say. The lawfulness of the oath was in this Assembly
keenly disputed, and Boston failed not to observe that the principles on
which the answers to the objections were founded were of such latitude,
that by them any oath might be made passable. They were indeed neither
more nor less than the swearer imposing his own sense upon the words
employed, which renders an oath altogether nugatory. In this manner did
Principal Carstairs swear it before the justices in Edinburgh, to the
great amusement of the Jacobites, and being clear for it, he, in the
assembly, by his singular policy, smoothed down all asperities, and
prevented those who had not the same capacity of conscience from coming to
any thing like a rupture with their brethren, for which cause, says
Boston, I did always thereafter honour him in my heart! Boston,
nevertheless, abhorred the oath, and could not bring his mind to take it,
but determined to keep his station in the church, till thrust out of it by
the civil authorities. He made over to his eldest son a house in Dunse,
which he had inherited from his father, and made an assignation of all his
other goods to his servant, John Currie, so that, when the law took
effect, he might elude the penalty of five hundred pounds sterling, that
was attached to the neglect or the refusal to take the oath within a
prescribed period. The memory of the late persecuting reigns was, however,
still fresh, and no one appeared willing to incur the odium of imitating
them; and, so far as we know, the penalty was never in one single instance
exacted. The subject of this memoir, at least, was never brought to any
real trouble respecting it.
Amid all Mr Boston’s
attention to public affairs he was still a most diligent minister; and
instead of relaxing any thing of his labours since leaving Simprin, had
greatly increased them by a habit he had fallen into of writing out his
sermons in full, which in the earlier part of his ministry he scarcely
ever did. This prepared the way for the publication of his sermons from
the press, by which they have been made extensively useful. The first
suggestion of this kind seems to have come from his friend Dr Trotter, to
whom he paid a visit at Dunse, after assisting at the sacrament at Kelso,
in the month of October, 1711; on which occasion the notes of the sermons
he had preached on the state of man were left with the Doctor for his
perusal, and they formed the foundation of that admirable work, the
Fourfold State, which was prepared for publication before the summer of
1714, but was laid aside for fear of the Pretender coming in and rendering
the sale impossible. In the month of August, the same year, he preached
his action sermon from Hosea ii, 19; which met with so much acceptance,
that he was requested for a copy with a view to publication. This be
complied with, and in the course of the following winter, it was printed
under the title of the Everlasting Espousals, and met with a very
good reception, twelve hundred copies being sold in a short time, which
paved the way for the publication of the Fourfold State, and was a means
of urging him forward in the most important of all his public appearances,
that in defence of the Marrow of Modern Divinity.
During the insurrection of
1715, he was troubled not a little with the want of military ardour among
his parishioners of Ettrick, and, in the year 1717, with an attempt to
have him altogether against his inclination transported to the parish of
Closeburn, in Dumfries-shire. In the meantime, the Fourfold State had been
again and again transcribed, and had been revised by Mr John Flint at
Edinburgh; and, in 1718, his friends, Messrs Simson, Gabriel Wilson, and
Henry Davidson, offered to advance money to defray the expense of its
publication. The MS., however, was sent at last to Mr Robert Wightman,
treasurer to the city of Edinburgh, who ultimately became the prefacer and
the publisher of the book, with many of his own emendations, in
consequence of which there was a necessity for cancelling a number of
sheets and reprinting them, before the author could allow it to come to
the public; nor was it thoroughly purged till it came to a second edition.
The first came out in 1720.
The oath of abjuration,
altered, in a small degree, at the petition of the greater part of the
presbyterian nonjurors, was again imposed upon ministers in the year 1719,
when the most of the ministers took it, to the great grief of many of
their people, and to the additional persecution of the few who still
wanted freedom to take it, of which number Mr Boston still continued to be
one. Mr Boston was at this time employed by the synod to examine some
overtures from the assembly regarding discipline; and having been, from
his entrance on the ministry, dissatisfied with the manner of admitting to
the Lord’s table, and planting vacant churches, he set himself to have
these matters rectified, by remarks upon, and enlargements of these
customs. The synod did not, however, even so much as call for them, and,
though they were by the presbytery laid before the commission, they were
never taken into consideration. "And I apprehend," says Boston,
"that the malady will be incurable till the present constitution be
violently thrown down." Though the judicatures were thus careless of
any improvement in discipline, they were not less so with regard to
doctrine. The Assembly, in 1717, had dismissed professor Simson without
censure, though he had gone far into the regions of error; and they
condemned the whole presbytery of Auchterarder, for denying that any
pre-requisite qualification was necessary on the part of the sinner for
coming to Christ; and this year, 1719, they, at the instigation of
Principal Haddow of St Andrews, commenced a prosecution against Mr James
Hog of Carnock, who had published an edition of the Marrow, Alexander
Hamilton minister of Airth, James Brisbane minister at Stirling, and John
Warden minister at Gargunnock, who had advocated its principles: which
ended in an act of the General Assembly, forbidding all under their
inspection in time coming to teach or preach any such doctrines. This act
of Assembly was by Boston and his friends brought before the presbytery of
Selkirk, who laid it before the synod of Merse and Teviotdale. Nothing to
any purpose was done in the synod; but the publicity of the proceedings
led to a correspondence with Mr James Hog, Mr Ralph Erskine, and others,
by whom a representation and petition was given into the Assembly, 1721.
This representation, however, was referred to the commission. When called
before the commission, on Thursday, May 18, Mr Hog not being ready, and Mr
Boner of Torphichen gone home, Mr Boston had the honour of appearing first
in that cause. On that day they were borne down by universal clamour. Next
day, however, Principal Haddow was hardly pushed in argument by Mr Boston,
and Logan of Culcross was completely silenced by Mr Williamson of Inveresk.
The commission then gave out, to the twelve representing brethren twelve
queries, to which they were required to return answers against the month
of March next. These answers, luminous and. brief beyond any thing of the
kind in our language, were begun by Mr Ebenezer Erskine, but greatly
extended and improved by Mr Gabriel Wilson of Maxton. For presuming thus
to question the acts of Assembly, the whole number were admonished and
rebuked. Against this sentence they gave in a protestation, on which they
took instruments in due form; but it was not allowed to be read. In the
meantime, Mr Boston prepared an edition of the Marrow, illustrated by
copious notes, which was published in 1726, and has ever since been well
known to the religious public. The Assembly, ashamed, after all, of the
act complained of, remodelled it in such a way as to abate somewhat its
grossness, though, in the process, it lost little of its venom.
Following out his plan of
illustrating gospel truth, Boston preached to his people a course of
sermons on the covenants of works and of grace, which have long been in
the hands of the public, and duly prized by judicious readers. His last
appearance in the General Assembly was in the year 1729, in the case of
Professor Simson, where he dissented from the sentence of the Assembly as
being no just testimony of the church’s indignation against the
dishonour done by the said Mr Simson to our glorious Redeemer, the Great
God and our Saviour, nor agreeable to the rule of God’s word in such
cases, nor a fit means to bring the said Mr Simson himself to repentance,
of which, he added, he had yet given no evidence. This dissent, however,
for the sake of the peace of the church, which some said it might
endanger, he did not insist to have recorded on the Assembly’s books.
His last public work was a letter to the presbytery, which met at Selkirk,
May 2, 1732; respecting the overture for settling vacant parishes; which
breathes all the ardour and piety of his more early productions, and in
which he deprecates the turning of that overture into a standing law, as
what cannot fail to be the ruin of the church, and he prays that his
letter may be recorded as a testimony against it. His health had
been for a number of years declining; he was now greatly emaciated; and he
died on the twentieth of May, 1732, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Mr
Boston was married shortly after his settlement at Simprin to Katharine
Brown, a worthy pious woman, by whom he had ten children, four of whom
only survived him. Thomas, the youngest, was ordained to the pastoral care
of the parish of Oxnam; but removing thence to Jedburgh without a
presentation from the patron, or the leave of his presbytery, became one
of the fathers of the Relief church. Of the fortunes of his other children
we have not been informed. Ardent and pious, his whole life was devoted to
the promoting of the glory of God and the best interests of his
fellow-men. As an author, though he has been lowered by the publication of
too many posthumous works, he must yet be admitted to stand in the first
class. Even the most incorrect of his pieces betray the marks of a highly
original and powerful mind, and his Fourfold State of Man cannot fail to
be read and admired so long as the faith of the gospel continues to be
taught and learned in the language in which it is written. [Mr. Boston’s
name is still held in great reverence by the people of the south of
Scotland. The editor of this work well recollects two questions which, in
his youth, used to pass among the boys at a town not far from Ettrick –
"who was the best, and who the worst man that ever lived?" –
their minds evidently reflecting only upon modern times. The answer to the
first query gave, "Mr Boston, the minister of Ettrick," the worst
man, I regret to say, was the Earl of March, father of the last Duke of
Queensberry, whose fame, it may be guessed, was purely local.]
Memoirs of the Life, Times, and
Writings of Thomas Boston of Ettrick
Written by himself with Appendices (new edition) (1899) (pdf)
The Whole Works of the Reverend Thomas Boston of Ettrick
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