This was a talk given by late father, Rev John J Murray at the Banner Border Conference 2001.
Jonathan Edwards spoke of him as 'a truly great divine'.
'One of the brightest lights in the firmament of the Reformed Church in Scotland.', in the opinion of Principal John Macleod
'If Scotland had been searched during the earlier part of the 18th century there was not a minister within its bounds who, alike in personal character, and in the discharge of his pastoral function, approached nearer the apostolic model than did this man of God' - Dr Andrew Thomson
'Thomas Boston was a common place genius. Not a common place man but a common place genius'. Rabbi Duncan
Somebody once said: '[Thomas Boston] did more to fan the flame of true piety in Scotland than that of any other single minister in his generation.'
'One of the brightest lights in the firmament of the Reformed Church in Scotland.', in the opinion of Principal John Macleod
'If Scotland had been searched during the earlier part of the 18th century there was not a minister within its bounds who, alike in personal character, and in the discharge of his pastoral function, approached nearer the apostolic model than did this man of God' - Dr Andrew Thomson
'Thomas Boston was a common place genius. Not a common place man but a common place genius'. Rabbi Duncan
Somebody once said: '[Thomas Boston] did more to fan the flame of true piety in Scotland than that of any other single minister in his generation.'
Summary of his life
Boston laboured in two of the most remote and desolate parishes in the country and ministered in the most difficult times. He faced the most heart-rending trails and difficulties in personal and family life yet he overcame and is a model of pastoral success in the most difficult times.
It is to the enrichment of future generations that Thomas Boston left Memoirs of his lifetime and writings, divided into twelve periods addressed in the first instance to his children. It is a spiritual classic.
1. A remarkable conversion
He was born on the 17th March 1676 in the Border town of Duns. He was the youngest of seven children. His parents belonged to the humbler middle class.
At an early age he went to school. 'The schoolmistress having her chamber in my father's house I was early put to school; and having a capacity for learning and being of towardly disposition, was kindly treated by her; often expressing her hope of seeing me in the pulpit'. About the age of seven he 'began to conceive a remarkable pleasure in reading the Bible'. At the age of 8 he went to the Grammar school in Duns.
His parents were godly conscientious Presbyterian folk who refused to bend to prelatic authority and suffered severely for it. His father John Boston was cast into Duns prison for non-conformity. One of Thomas' earliest memories was being of taken to prison to provide company for his father in his loneliness. 'When I was a little boy I lay in the prison of Duns with him to keep him company.'
'During the first years of my being at the Grammar School I kept the Kirk punctually, where I heard those of the Episcopal way; that being the national establishment; but I knew nothing of the matter, save to give suit and presence within the walls of the house; living without God in the world, unconcerned about the state of my soul, till the year 1687.'
It was in that year that James II granted the Presbyterians liberty of worship. One of those free to exercise his ministry unmolested was Henry Erskine, the father of Ebenezer and Ralph, the founders of the Secession. He was invited by the Presbyterians of the hamlet of Rivelaw near Whitsome, only some 5 miles from Duns, to minister to them. John Boston was not the man to listen to the curate in the parish of Duns when a saint and a sufferer like Henry Erskine were preaching 5 miles from his door. Considerable numbers of the Duns people, weary of the sapless and Christless preaching to which they had been constrained to listen in their native town, gladly walked to Whitsome each Sunday.
John Boston took his 11-year-old son to Whitsome and it was under Erskine's preaching that Thomas was effectually converted to Christ. 'My father took me thither and laid me in Christ's way'. He writes in his account
'By whose means it pleased the Lord to awaken me and bring me under exercise about my soul's state, being then going on in the 12th year of my age. After that I went back no more till the Episcopalians were turned out: it was the common observation in these days that whenever one turned serious about his soul's state and case he left them.'
He refers to his conversion in his Soliloquy on the Art of Man Fishing:
'Little wast thou thinking, O my soul on Christ, heaven, or thyself when thou went to the Newton of Whitsome to hear a preaching when Christ first dealt with thee; there thou got an unexpected cast'.
'I know I was touched quickly after the first hearing, wherein I was like one amazed with some new and strange thing.'
Erskine's ministry continued to be richly blessed to Thomas so that he would walk those 5 miles. come wind come weather, to obtain food for his soul and refreshment for his spirit:
'In the winter sometimes it was my lot to go alone, without so much as a horse to carry me through Blackadder water, the wading whereof in sharp frosty weather I very well remember. But such things were then easy, for the benefit of the Word, which came with power.'
He and two other boys from the school 'met frequently in a chamber in my father's house for prayer, reading the Scripture and spiritual conference; whereby we had some advantage, both in point of knowledge and tenderness.'
Here the true foundation was laid in Boston's life. Here his life long habits of self-examination, prayer and Bible reading with systematic meditation were formed at that time.
2. The call to the ministry
John Boston had doubtless by this time resolved that his youngest son should be a minister, and the son himself, before his school days were over, had secretly set his heart upon the same calling. There were difficulties in the way. The Boston's were not rich and Thomas thought of turning to a trade but his father would not hear of it. He was apprenticed to Alexander Cockburn, a notary in the town. This employment continued for two years and as he acknowledged proved of great usefulness in later life both in study and in the clerkships of Presbytery and Synod.
The Call: 'He brought it through many difficulties, tried me with various disappointments, at length carried it to the utmost point of hopelessness, seemed to be laying the gravestone upon it at the time of my mother's death: and yet after all he brought it to pass; and that has been the usual method of Providence with me all along in matters of the greatest weight'
At length he entered Edinburgh University in 1691. He studied unweariedly and he lived on scanty fare. Fearful of exhausting his father's slender purse he practised an economy that is notable even in a Scottish student. When he graduated in 1694 his College expenses - fees, maintenance and all - had only mounted up to some £14. We cannot wonder that he experienced bouts of fainting and a permanently weakened constitution.
In the summer of 1694 Boston received the bursary from the Presbytery of Duns and after an autumn spent in the private study of divinity, he entered on his theological course in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1695. Dr George Campbell filled the theological chair. He spent only one session there and chose to complete his studies under the Presbytery while supporting himself by working as a tutor. He became tutor to Andrew Fletcher the stepson of Lieutenant Colonel Bruce of Kennet, near Clackmannan, where he remained for about a year.
'Finding myself providentially settled there, in the character I bore, I judged myself obliged in conscience to seek the spiritual good of the family, and to watch over them and see to their manners. Accordingly I kept up family worship, catechised the servants, pressed the careless to secret prayer, reproved and warned against sinful practices, and earnestly endeavoured the reformation of the vicious'. (p 25)
To the end of his life Boston looked back on that year with the Kennets as a thriving time for his soul.
'The time I was at Kennet continues to be unto me a remarkable time among the days of my life…
Though it was heavy to me that I was taken from the school of divinity and sent to Kennet; yet I am convinced God sent me to another school there, in order to prepare me for the work of the Gospel, for which he had designed me: for there I learned in some measure what it was to have the charge of souls; and being naturally bashful, timorous, and much subject to the fear of man, I attained by what I met there, to some boldness, and not regarding the persons of men when out of God's way. There I learned that God will countenance one in the faithful discharge if his duty, though it be not attended with the desired success; and that plain dealing will impress an awe on the party's conscience, though their corruption still rages against him that so deals with them' (p 29-30).
On 15th June 1697 he was licensed by the Presbytery of Duns and Chirnside. His preaching soon began to attract attention. There was a force and freshness in it that arrested the common people. One would have thought that such a preacher would have been settled soon. The call although nominally in the hands of the people was practically in the hands of the principal heritor or landlord. In seven different parishes when the popular voice was for choosing Boston hostile forces intervened. He was a probationer for two years and three months.
3. Boston's first pastorate in Simprin
At length the heritor and people of one small parish was found to be agreed. It was the parish of Simprin in the rich country of the Merse about 8 miles south-east of Duns.
There is recorded in the Memoirs, his struggle to know the mind of the Lord 'with respect to the affair of Simprin'.
- The rarity of the godly there, and in the country
- The very smallness of their number
- The smallness of the stipend; moreover
- The temper and way of the fraternity, though good men not agreeable to mine
- The main thing that then stuck with me, The little opportunity to be serviceable there.
He was ordained there on 21st September 1699.
The little church measured some 15' by 60'. There was no manse. For the first three years of his ministry he was the tenant in old house at the west end of the town. It was not until 1702 that a new manse was built.
Boston had but 88 examinable persons. He discovered that such was the ignorance of the people that he needed to give the most elementary teaching. When he went there was only one home in which there was family worship. The Lord's Supper had not been observed for several years.
Before the first year was past his little parish was thoroughly organised. There was a forenoon and afternoon service. There was an evening meeting for the study of the Catechism. Every Tuesday a meeting for praise and prayer. Every Thursday in winter in the evenings and in summer in the daytime, there was a weekday service. Diets of catechising were held at regular intervals. Every household was regularly visited. Boston deliberately gave his best to what he called 'his handful'.
Habits were formed and his methods of devotion and study fashioned for good. It was here he found how the tone of the week is lowered by plunging into worldly business on Monday morning and it was here he formed the lifelong habit of spending the first hours of Monday in prayer. It was there that he first prepared himself systematically for family worship and opened morning family worship to any from the parish who wished to join with the family. Here began those family fasts. Above all it was at Simprin that Boston awoke to the sanctifying power of dogged work.
No pulpit work won by such prayer and fasting and study can long be powerless. There was a growing interest and a widening response until at last the little church was unable to accommodate the crowds especially at communion seasons. After seven years and eight months of concentrated labour there he could exclaim: 'Simprin! O blessed be he for his kindness at Simprin' 'I will ever remember Simprin as a field which the Lord had blessed'.
After seven years there was not a house without family worship.
4. Ettrick - Boston's second pastorate
It was with great reluctance that Boston moved from Simprin. The thing that seemed to influence Boston to Ettrick was its spiritual desolation. In the early centuries the district was covered with forest - Ettrick Forest. There were not more than 400 inhabitants. As late as 1792 the writer of the Statistical Account supplies a somewhat doleful description of his parish: 'This parish possess no advantages. The roads are almost impassable.'
The manse at Ettrick was in a ruinous state. 'Having hitherto had a sorry habitation in the old manse, it was this summer razed, and a new one built; I and my family, in the meantime living in the stable and bar; in the former of which were made a chimney and a partition'.
The people of that place were full of pride and self-assurance and deceit. It was a sorely broken parish. The smouldering discontent with the Revolution Settlement had been fanned into a flame by Cameronians from the west. 'The common talk was all of separation, and of the lawfulness of attending service in the parish church'
'There were three parties in the place;
1. the dissenter followers of John Macmillan and a considerable number who have been all along unto this day a dead weight on my ministry in this place
2. an heritor in the parish with two elders dependants of his deserted the ordinances for 10 years
3. the congregation of my hearers under the disadvantage of what influence these two parties could have upon them. There appetite for the ordinances I did not find to be sharpened by the long fast they had got, for about the space of four years'.
A four years' vacancy had wrought its natural effect. Services were irregular and the Lord's Supper had not been administered. People had lost the art of attention during service. Men had grown careless. They had lost the art of decent attention during service. They gossiped so noisily in the churchyard in time of sermon that one of the elders had to be told off to keep order there.
The lax morality
The vice of swearing was widespread. 'One thing I was particularly surprised with viz the prevalency of the sin of profane swearing; and was amazed to find blessing and cursing proceeding out of the same mouth; praying persons, and praying in their families too, horrid swearers at times.' He speaks of the frequent sin of uncleanness. what with fornication, what with adulteries, the place of repentance has been seldom empty since the planting of this parish.'
The first ten years were a hard struggle. After 8 years he told his wife 'My heart is alienated from this place.' What kept him there was the sad plight of the people if he left them.
But in the long run faith and prayer and study began to have their effect. 'The artless story of his study and his preaching and his daily wrestling with God, surrounded and shadowed as he was, is one of the noblest records that were ever penned. Slowly and surely his influence grew. Men felt the trust and power of his preaching. His fame spread. One of his action sermons had been published and word began to steal into the valley that it was making a deep impression in Edinburgh. Strange faces became common in the church. Then came the inevitable calls. Ettrick grew convinced at last that in losing Boston they would lose an incomparable minister. When in 1716 Boston came under call to Closeburn in Dumfries-shire a congregational fast was appointed by the session. It was the turning point in parish life. Henceforth he was to minister with a new authority and to be instrument of far larger blessing.
In his last communion in Ettrick he gave out 777 tokens for the Lord's Table. In the end he outlived the opposition and gained from high and low a place of most remarkable esteem. His memory is cherished with veneration in Ettrick
5. The influence of his books
Memoirs of Thomas Boston
It was written for his children. 'It is based on a faith in the particular providence of God, in the intimacy of His fellowship with His Children, and in the closeness of the connection between their spiritual and their natural life, the like of which perhaps no man of equal intellectual power ever attained. … The whole practical life of Boston turned on these two principles: first that it was his duty to try to ascertain, and his privilege to know if he tried properly, what the will of God was in relation to every matter, great or small with which he was concerned; and second that things both external and spiritual fell out with him well or ill just as he followed or failed to follow the divine will' Blaikie 197
Human Nature in its Fourfold State
This was his first book. It originated in a series of sermons first preached in Simprin and again in Ettrick. After a serious of mishaps it was published anonymously in 1720
'There is no book of practical divinity, not even William Guthrie's Trial of Saving Interest in Christ, nor Rutherford's Letters, that was more read in the godly homes of Scotland than this treatise. It did more to mould the thought of his countrymen than anything except the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It is of this work that Jonathan Edwards says that it 'shows Mr Boston to have been a truly great divine.' John MacLeod
It was reprinted some 100 times and translated into many languages. It found its way and it was eagerly read by folks all over the Borders.
The Crook in the Lot
During the final months of his life he had been preparing this book for the press. The material first given as sermons was etched out of the sufferings that Thomas and Catherine had endured together. The subtitle is 'The Sovereignty and wisdom of God in the Afflictions of men, together with a Christian deportment under them.'
1) whatever crook there is in one's lot it is of God's making
2) that whatever God sees meet to mar, no one will be able to mend in his lot
3) that the considering of the crook in the lot as the work of God -that is of His making - is the proper means to bring one to a Christian deportment under it
This book has taught countless other Christian people to accept with meekness those sufferings appointed for them by a sovereign and merciful God.
A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-fishing
This was penned during his time of probation. While reading the Scripture in private the words of Matthew 4.19 'Follow me and I will make you fishers of men' deeply impressed him and his heart 'cried out ' for their accomplishment. It was a sermonic meditation addressed to himself. No one outside the family saw it till it was published in 1773
6. What made Thomas Boston such an effective Pastor?
A thorough-going conversion work
To Boston conversion began with awakening from spiritual complacency to spiritual unease as one faces the reality of one's sin. This lead on through searching for repentance and faith and a new life with God. That in turn lead to a God-given evidence and confidence that one has been divinely enabled to turn from sin to a self-abandoning trust in Christ as the Sin-bearer and that one's heart has been renewed in the process.
Believing that the fallen human heart is desperately prone to optimistic self-deception the likes of Boston stressed the need for constant self-suspicion and self-examination. Conversion was a deep and thorough work that led to on going soul exercise and continuous repentance.
An unmistakable call to the ministry.
His sense of call to preaching was strong. He is forever searching his mind and heart on the question of a call. There is no move without God.
'Three things were suggested to me in the call to Simprin
1 Unless I am sure of my call to it from the Lord, how will I stand against the discouragements I will meet with there?
2 How can I think of profiting them, if He send me not to them?
3 How will I stand with them before the tribunal of God, if I join with them without a call from Himself.'
A thorough grasp of theology
Boston was Bible man. Prick him anywhere and his blood is Bibline His preaching: 'There was in it a scriptural fulness that nothing but passionate devotion to the Bible gives'. Morrison
He had scarcely any books: 'And thus my scarcity of books proved a kind disposal of Providence to me; I in that method arriving at a greater distinctness and certainty in these points, than otherwise I could have obtained' (P168)
The teaching of Thomas Boston was firmly grounded on the Westminster Confession of Faith. He was committed to the federal theology of the Confession. Federal theology organises Christian truth around the covenants of Works Redemption and Grace. .Boston set aside the distinction between the covenant of Redemption and the Covenant of Grace for fear of conditionality entering into the Covenant of grace.
Habits of prayer and self-examination
Boston speaks in one place about a debate he got into with one of the dissenters on communion with God. This SH gave his opinion that it consisted in doing the will of God and keeping his commandments. I told him that all communion was mutual and therefore it could not consist in that and that actual communion with God consists in the Lord's letting down the influence of his grace on the soul and the soul's reacting the same in the exercise of grace. O says he that is extraordinary; wherewith I was stunned. I told him that it was that without which neither he nor I would be saved.
Boston was a man of ardent prayer. Secret prayer was the congenial element in which his spirit lived, moved and had its being'. He did nothing without consulting the will of the Lord. It was the fundamental secret of the man and his ministry .It was manifest when he was a tutor he set aside time for fasting. He had his seasons of prolonged secret devotion in which 'prayer over flowed its banks like Jordan in the time of harvest.'
'Having allotted the morning entirely for prayer and meditation, some worldly thoughts crept in .. In the afternoon I somewhat recovered my forenoon's loss.'
'Which done I thought upon my sins and heart-monsters, till my soul was more humbled in me.'
Rigorous self-scrutiny
Rabbi Duncan said that Boston had a 'pernickety conscience' - one that took note of details of conduct and was intensely self-critical. 'He was accurately and extensively regardful of the divine law, in all manner of life and conversation (even in the things that escape the notice of the most part of Christians).'
'And then what pains he took to put things right again; what seasons he had of fasting and of intense self-scrutiny, and tearing down of idols, and passionate crying and tears - Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit. We may believe that Boston was often too hard on himself; we may believe that the languor he sometime s felt in duty was not due to God's forsaking him but was the natural reaction from a stain too intense and protracted, unrelieved by due rest and relaxation.'
He would be a very blind observer who did not connect this intensity of inward discipline with his great spiritual power.
After that minding to renew the covenant with God and subscribe it with my hand I drew it up in writing Duns August 14 1699 The covenant.
Dr Andrew Bonar used to tell with great solemnity what was said to him at the beginning of his ministry by an old friend and minister: Remember it is a remark of old and experienced men, that very few men, and very few ministers, keep up to the end the edge that was on their spirit at first’ Bonar p 339.
Andrew Bonar ‘One of the gravest perils that besets the ministry is a restless scattering of energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests which leave no margin of time for receptive and absorbing communion with God’.
Diligence in study and in work
Boston was industrious and studious self disciplined and well-organised. Boston never seemed to rest. Always praying always studying always preaching always visiting always searching his heart drawing up covenants with God; 'Being twelve mile distant from the Presbytery seat, I attended it not in winter; but when I attended I ordinarily went way and returned the same day, being loath to lose two or three days on it.' He ends the Art of Man Fishing with the words 'If Christ should come and find you idle, when he is calling you to work, how will you be able to look him in the face?'
Boldness in declaring the truth
Boston was clear in this particularly during his tutoring in Clackmannan. As we can see in the Art of Manfishing he would not trim his message to suit the heritors. He feared to soil his conscience by obtaining a parish on the wrong terms.
He renounced the carnal policy of trimmers and time servers who toned God's message down and presented the realities of sin and grace forthrightly, rebuking where necessary, pulling no punches, and leaving the outcome to God.
The Revolution Settlement was a compromise and a spirit of toleration crept. It was bound to do so where you have men within one Church of varying doctrinal views and lifestyles. The old theology began to be discredited and a theology more in harmony with the natural feelings of man began to show its horns. The Simson case meant that he stood alone in his dissent in General Assembly.
A searching and discriminating ministry
Rutherford took the external character of membership. Boston had a much narrower view of the visible church and its membership. Boston knew true reality and was yearning after reality in the Church. He protested against formalism and indifference. The boundaries between the Church and the world were broken down. The undisguised worldliness of the Church. All who were not Turks or Pagans or Jews had been called Christian.
Boston argued that children derive their right to baptism not from their progenitors, but only from their immediate parents. The children of the promise are those whose parents have repented. Children of ungodly parents have no right to the seals of the covenant. No children but have but such as have at least one parent a visible believer has any right to baptism before the Church. He maintained that if the parents have no right to the table of the Lord then their infants have none to the ordinance of baptism.
1) If profane persons are granted the privilege they are likely to be hardened in their impiety.
2) The children themselves when they come to understand how their parents have lived, and that notwithstanding they had obtained baptism for them they will be inclined to despise as an unreal thing.
If hearing is not mixed with faith of what avail is it?
In Simprin and in Ettrick there was no rush to the sacrament. In Ettrick it was July 1710. This was the first time I administered it in Ettrick…I thought myself obliged to deal with every communicant personally'. Eventually 'in all there were but about fifty-seven persons of our own parish communicants'.
Preaching Christ
It was in the years as a probationer and in Simprin that his apprehension of the Gospel became clearer: 'I had much weakness and ignorance and much of a legal disposition and way, then and for a good time after undiscerned'
While still a probationer 'I began my preaching of the Word in a rousing strain; and would fain have set fire to the devil's nest. The first test I preached on was Ps 50.22 Now consider this I wen for the first two months Speaking with John Dysart of Coldingham (It was reported at Coldingham where most of his parishioners were Episcopalians he cowed opposition by carrying his pistols to the pulpit, and disposing of them there rather ostentatiously') 'But if you were entered on preaching of Christ, you would fine it very pleasant. I have often since that time remembered that word of Mr Dysart's as the first hint given me, by the good hand of my God, towards the doctrine of the Gospel'.
'Meanwhile being still on the scent as I was sitting one day in a house of Simprin, I espied above the window-head two little old books, which when I had taken down I found entitled, the one The Marrow of Modern Divinity the other Christ's blood flowing freely to sinners. These I reckon had been brought home from England by the master of the house, a soldier in the time of the civil wars. Finding them to point to the subject I was in particular concern about, I brought them both away. The latter a book of Saltmarsh's I relished not; and I think I returned it without reading it through. The other being the first part only of the Marrow I relished greatly… I found it to come close to the points I was in quest of and to show the consistency of these which I could not reconcile before. I had apprehended I had taken the hint from the Marrow and I had no great fondness for the conditionality of the covenant of grace'
These things while I was in the Merse gave my sermons a certain tincture which was discerned; though the Marrow from which it sprang, continued in utter obscurity,
He drank the renewing waters of the Marrow and the people drank from his preaching.
The Marrow of Modern Divinity 'The design of the whole is to elucidate and establish the perfect freeness of the Gospel salvation; to throw open the gates of righteousness; to lead up the sinner straight to the Saviour; to introduce him as guilty, perishing and undone; and to persuade him to grasp, without a moment's hesitation, the outstretched hand of God's mercy' (Blaikie p190)
The ground it supplied for a free and universal offer of the Gospel in harmony with Calvinistic doctrine, especially on personal election and particular redemption'.
The ground which the Marrow held to warrant such an offer was expressed by them in terms that God made 'a deed of gift' - a gift of Christ to mankind-sinners, and that every sinner of mankind was warranted and welcome to accept that gift. P191
Perhaps we may say that from this time the person of Christ came more prominently out than before in connection with the proclamation of the Gospel. Men were invited not so much to believe a doctrine of salvation as to entrust themselves to an all-sufficient Saviour
'From the very time of my settling here the great thing I aimed at in my preaching was to impress the people with a sense of their need of Christ, and to bring them to consider the foundations of practical religion' M p227
Earnestness and a passionate concern for souls
'Sin was such an awful thing - in one, around one, ever active, ever spreading its blight, ever offending God -that Boston could not get over it. As he looked into eternity and thought of lost sinners, the gloom gathered, his awe deepened. But this did not prevent him preaching a free and full salvation for all; it rather impelled him to increased earnestness in the proclamation.'
'When his congregation Banner 24 Boston felt deeply in his own heart every word of the Gospel he uttered
'Christ had the good of souls in his eye. When you preach let this be your design, to seek to recover lost sheep. To get some converted and brought to your Master.'
His Sanctified afflictions
'It is the usual way of providence with me that blessing comes through several iron gates.' He was a man of a melancholic disposition. He ate little as a student in order to eek out his father's small resources. He often fainted and appeared to be dying. His condition was so severe that his teeth blackened and gradually dropped out.
'...meanwhile my health was so broken, that I looked rather like one to be transported into the other world, than into my parish.'
He lost both his parents comparatively early; his mother when he was not yet 15 and this event even threatened for a time to put an end to his hopes of entering the ministry) and his father in 1701 when he was not yet 25 and recently settled in Simprin.
A loving and devoted father himself he had the sad experience of laying six of his own bairns in the grave - two while he was in Simprin and four at Ettrick
He himself was often ill suffering from much pain and weakness physically. On receiving the call to ettrick it is said that his health was so broken that he looked rather like one to be transported into another world than into another parish.'
And as though this was not enough his last twelve years were clouded with a great and grievous domestic grief. In the summer of 1720 his wife began to show signs of insanity. This dark eclipse of the spirit, although sometimes diminished seldom wholly passed away. Indeed in later years the gloom became darker still. It touched Boston on his tenderest point. She was confined to an apartment called 'the inner prison' and there she spent months and years the subject of a mental malady which no science or human device could mitigate
'I think I have thereby obtained soul-advantage; more heavenliness in the frame of my heart, more contempt of the world, as the widow that is desolate trusteth in God …more careful to walk with God, and to get evidence for heaven; more resolution for the Lord's work over the belly of difficulties' (ET)
7. Lessons from Bostons Life
The nature of true religion
Boston was striving after reality. 'Labour for the experience of religion in your soul that you may have an argument for the reality of it from your spiritual sense and feeling'.
Rabbi Duncan 'said that he should like to sit at the feet of Jonathan Edwards to learn what true godliness is and at the feet of Thomas Boston to learn how to reach it.'
'It is very certain that it is always to preachers of the type of Henry Erskine and Thomas Boston that men turn when they come to be in earnest about the state of their souls.'
How soft we are How easily we grumble at the least difficulty or affront we encounter
He endured hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
The nature of the grace of God in the Gospel and the danger of legalism
Legalism is any teaching which either distorts the free grace of God in the Gospel or distort the true nature of God's grace in the law or even fails to place the gracious law of God in its proper place in redemption.
Legalism is a distortion of the Gospel. It is also a distortion of the law. It is disguised in subtle form mixing the way of works with the way of grace. It is possible to have an evangelical mind and a legal heart. An orthodox creed and unsound heart. The men who opposed the Marrowmen were committed to the Westminster Confession.
For Boston the great danger was the new legalism (Baxterianism) which turned faith itself into a 'work' and presented it as the Ground of justification. Boston contended for unconditional grace to everyman without exception.
'The tear of repentance is shed by the eye of faith, and faith as it weeps stands before the cross'
By separating Christ from his benefits, Hadow and others had begun to fall into the categories of Arminianism and reduced the Gospel to a message about the benefits of Christ's death. Boston and his friends along with true orthodoxy preached not mere benefits but a saviour who is full of grace and able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God by him.'
The nature of Gospel Evangelism
Evangelism as carried on by preaching and pastoral admonition took time and was expected to take time. The Westminster tradition were realistic about the likelihood that the conversion process from start to finish would take months, just as the gestation and final birth of a human baby does. The main way in which God advances conversion in our day as in Boston's is through the sustained faithfulness of parents, friends and Church teachers witnessing, instructing and encouraging informally and of preachers expounding the Gospel.
There is a vital connection between the state of the ministry and the health of the Church.
We are reminded of the words of Richard Baxter ' All Churches either rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall (not in worldly grandeur) but in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.'
'The great want of today is a holier ministry. We do not need more stalwart polemics, more mighty apologists, or preachers who compass a wide range of natural knowledge, important as these are; but men of God who bring the atmosphere of heaven with them into the pulpit and speak from the borders of another world’ Robert Sample writing in 1897.
The nature of God's work
'His great learning, his powerful gifts as a preacher and the force and sanctity of his character would have marked him out as eminently adapted for a higher sphere; but the days gad come when the other party manoeuvred to prevent the promotion of such ''high-flyers'' as the were called, and the result in this case was, to use his own expression, that he was ''staked in Ettrick'' 'Blaikie 196
It is not where a Christian serves but what quality of service he renders that really counts. Boston didn’t get his preferment in this life. He was not able to see fully the purpose behind his 'sea of troubles' in Ettrick. But while men who occupied prominent positions in the Church are largely forgotten the writings of Thomas Boston are read around the world today.
'Boston is a proof that the truths which penetrate deepest in the soul of man, which move it most powerfully, which transform it most thoroughly, and which are cherished most gratefully are those which form the warp and the woof of The Crook in the Lot and The Fourfold State.' Blaikie 197
8. The Difficulties he encountered
The Reformation in Scotland was more thorough and complete than anywhere outside Geneva itself. Established by law in 1560. Embraced Presbyterianism. Attempts to impose Episcopacy. Kirk resisted this in the National Covenant. The teaching of the Reformed Faith in the Westminster Confession and catechisms.
The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 undid all the good work of the Covenants and restored bishops. In 1662 Acts formally re-established episcopacy, outlawed the covenants, banned conventicles and re-introduced patronage. Some 270 of the best ministers in Scotland were deprived of their livings for refusing to accept the new establishment. This led to the Covenanter struggle and the killing times, which embittered the Presbyterians. .Indulgences in 1669 and 1672 were only moderately successful. Opposition was confined to the southwest where a small band that came to be called Camerionians renounced their allegiance to the king in the Sanguhair Declaration of 22 June 1680.
The Revolution of 1688 and in 1689 the Scottish crown was granted to William of Orange. On 7th June 1690 Presbyterian government was restored, the ejected ministers were reinstated. Parliamentary approval was given to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Patronage was conditionally abolished. It was in many ways a compromise.
1)The right of nomination of ministers remained with heritors.
2) Many Episcopalians ministers were encouraged to remain in their parishes under the re-established Presbyterian system. They outnumbered the Presbyterians and their presence was to have a baneful effect on the Church.
The doctrinal and spiritual decline
James Fraser of Brea: 'I perceive that divinity was much altered from what it was in the primitive Reformers' time… I abhorred and was at enmity with Mr Baxter as a stated enemy to the grace of God, under the cover of opposing Antinomianism.'
Dr John Macleod: 'There was a way of putting things which dealt in a very gingerly fashion with the grace of the Gospel, and fenced its freedom with such restrictions and conditions as turned it into a new law and abridged the comfort and assurance of salvation that believers are warranted to cherish.'
It was only after 1714 that the extent of the drift became evident.
John Simson was Professor of Divinity at Glasgow in 1706. He taught students from West of Scotland and Ulster. In 1715 charged with propagating Arminianism. The General Assembly appointed a Committee to investigate the Charge. Its report was not given until the Assembly of 1717. He questionable modes of expression but did not intend to deviate from the Confession. He was acquitted with a warning 'not to attribute too much to natural reason and the power of corrupt nature to the disparagement of revelation and efficacious free grace'
At the next diet of the Assembly In the following diet was taken in a proposition calculated by the Presbytery of Auchterarder for opposing the erroneous doctrine of Professor Simson. In an effort to counteract the Arminian and Legalist teaching of the time they resolved to ask student for licence Do you subscribe to the following proposition 'It is not sound and orthodox to teach that we must first forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ and instating us in Covenant with God' A young student William Craig hesitated to give assent to it. The Presbytery refused to give him an extract of the licence. He appealed to Assembly and won. The Assembly declared it abhorrence of the Auchterarder creed.
That day proved to be a watershed in the history of the Church of Scotland. 'In the condemnation of that proposition was the beginning of the spate for several years after ran in the public actings of the Church against the doctrines of grace, under the name of Antinomianism'. It was in that assembly that Boston mentioned the book that was to be at the very centre of the dispute and gave the controversy its name The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The Marrow 1641 and 1648 Edward Fisher 12 years in a legalistic spirit approved by some of the Westminster divines a distillation of the best divines Luther Calvin etc
'Hence the more one pursues communion with God, he will more narrowly observe providence; and when he grows remiss and negligent as to communion with God he lets these things easily pass' I 197
'The timing of providence the great weight of a dispensation sometimes lies in this very circumstance, that then it came, and neither sooner or later.'
Thomas Boston was a man of God. Before his death 'young and old had come to pronounce his name with reverence. It has become a synonym for holy living'
