Thomas Boston, of Ettrick.\

By REV. D. BEATON.

I.

OVER two hundred years ago on the first day of May, Thomas Boston entered on his Ettrick ministry. The day is memorable in the history of Scotland as that on which the Union between England and Scotland was finally consummated. In his Memoirs¹ Boston makes reference to the two events. The Union was regarded with anything but favour by the great majority of the Scottish people, though it proved an incalculable blessing to Scotland, and two hundred years after its consummation we are being

* This series of articles are reprinted from the Princeton Theological Review.—Editor.

1. “On the first day of May I was admitted minister of Ettrick; a day remarkable to after ages as the day in which the Union of Scotland and England commenced, according to the articles thereof agreed upon by the two parliaments. And on that very account I had frequent occasion to remember it! the spirits of the people of that place being embittered on that event against the ministers of the church; which was an occasion of much heaviness to me, though I never was for the Union; but always against it from the beginning unto this day.” Memoirs, p. 208. The edition of the Memoirs quoted is that edited by Rev. G. H. Morrison and published by Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, Edinburgh, 1899.

reminded by able articles in our leading journals of the feelings with which the people of 1706 and 1707 received the proposals for union. But the Scotland of to-day is more inclined to commemorate the event with rejoicings than to regard it as a calamity. Synchronising as has been noticed with this important event was the induction of the Rev. Thomas Boston to the parish of Ettrick. It, too, is an event that claims the attention not only of Scotsmen but of Presbyterians the wide world over. And already steps are being taken to commemorate the bi-centenary of the induction of Boston to the parish which was privileged to enjoy the oversight of one of the most renowned pastors that ever stood in a Scottish pulpit. But renowned as Boston was as a pastor and preacher, his fame as a student and scholar travelled beyond the bounds of his own church and country. Dr. James Walker, who is a competent judge, has borne eloquent testimony to Boston’s scholarship.² And even such a writer as the late Rev. Henry G. Graham in his Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century is constrained to bear testimony to Boston’s remarkable influence though he refers to his theology in the flippant style common to writers of his school. “Notwithstanding much that seems extravagant to us,” he says, “and melancholy in Mr. Boston, he was a man of ability and of great influence in his day; he was a powerful preacher of the grim school, the representative of a prominent type of thought and feeling; he moved the hearts and expressed the faith of a large proportion of the people throughout the country, who thumbed his Crook in the Lot and his Fourfold State with endless edification. Peasants and farmers read them by their peat fires, and shepherds on the solitary silent hills; his smaller works were the favourite chapbooks of pedlars, and the twelve portly tomes that contained his theological expositions were found in many a manse library and on the bookshelves of every Seceding minister long after the century was closed.” (Vol. II, p. 80.)

II.

This may be regarded as a fitting time and place to make some reference to his place among Scottish preachers and theologians and to the part he played in some of the great controversies that agitated the Church of Scotland during his day.

At the outset some reference must be made to his remarkable Memoirs, for, after all, it is here we find Boston as he was. Scottish religious literature is by no means barren in autobiography. The Autobiography and Diary of James Melvill is invaluable to the student of Scottish ecclesiastical history for the period which it covers and the Memoirs of the Rev. James Fraser of Brea is a rich storehouse of spiritual experience, fragrant still with the sweet incense of prayer. But it may be said that Boston’s Memoirs combines in a remarkable degree the distinguishing features of Melvill’s

1. “At Simprin he had mastered the French language that he might have an entrance into French theological literature; but he seems to have been yet unacquainted with Hebrew. At the time he came to Ettrick, he tells us he borrowed a ‘piece of the Hebrew Bible containing the books of Samuel and Kings’ and with that set himself to the study of the ‘Holy Tongue.’ After a while he bought for himself the whole Hebrew Scriptures. ‘This,’ he says, ‘was the happy year wherein I was first master of a Hebrew Bible.’ And now he ‘plied the Hebrew original close and with great delight.’ I need not tell at length how he ran the course of Hebrew scholarship till he became an enthusiast on the subject of Hebrew accentuation and wanted to publish it. . . . He was the best Hebrew scholar in Scotland as he was the freshest and most powerful of Scottish living theologians. And I have been told by the most competent scholar of our country that he regards Boston’s work as one of sterling value and not yet out of date.” Walker’s Scottish Theology and Theologians, p. 321.

Autobiography and Fraser’s Memoirs. The graphic pen pictures of persons, the happy descriptions of events in which Melvill was such a master are all characteristic of Boston’s Memoirs, while on the other hand the deep religious experience of Fraser of Brea combined as it is with rare power in spiritual analysis and sane outlook on the remarkable phenomena of the spiritual life will be met with in Boston’s autobiography. The Memoirs was published in 1776, forty-four years after his death. It has been said that the Memoirs was probably edited by his son, Thomas Boston, who succeeded his father at Ettrick and was latterly minister of the Relief Church at Jedburgh. But, as the Rev. George D. Low has pointed out, this could scarcely be the case, as Boston the younger died in 1767. In all likelihood it was the grandson of the elder Boston, Michael, who prepared the Memoirs for the press.³ In the “Address to his Children,” which is prefixed to the Memoirs, Boston tells us that he left two autobiographic manuscripts.⁴ The one was entitled, Passages of my Life, and the other, General Account of my Life. The first was begun shortly after his settlement at Ettrick, and additions were made to it from time to time during his ministry till it was completed in October in 1730. In this he incorporated passages from a diary and other incidents he had previously taken note of. The second manuscript, the General Account, was begun in December, 1729, and completed in October, 1730. To both of these Boston added some passages afterwards. In the first edition of the Memoirs (1776), Michael Boston states in a note, “in preparing this work for the press, it was judged absolutely necessary, in order to prevent repetition, and references from the one volume to the other, to reduce both into one continued narrative or history, taking care all along to insert the Passage of His Life in the General Account in their proper places, according to their respective dates and years and as the nature of the subjects treated of required.”

III.

The manuscripts of these two works were to remain in Boston’s family—”the property thereof to be vested from time to time, in such an one of them, if any such there shall be, as shall addict himself to the holy ministry.” In accordance with this wish, the manuscripts passed to his son Thomas, and from him to Michael Boston, who died in 1785. Brown of Whitburn had evidently perused one of the manuscripts, and from the materials gathered by him it is now known that it was the General Account he had seen. But from 1785 nothing was known of what had become of this manuscript. The Rev. George Low, already referred to, having heard that the manuscript was still in existence, took steps to procure it, and was successful in his search. A number of changes, not improvements in all cases at least, were made by the editor in the first edition.⁵ A number of

1. See a very interesting article in British Weekly, Nov. 28, 1906, entitled “Thomas Boston: His Memoirs—Original Manuscripts,” by Rev. Geo. D. Low, M.A., Edinburgh. A full account of the manuscripts of the Memoirs is given in this article, to which we are much indebted for the above. Mr. Low has decided to publish the General Account of My Life, and in all likelihood it will appear in the autumn of this year.

2. Morrison ed. of Memoirs, p. 1.

3. Boston wrote “dovering,” his grandson substituted slumbering; river becomes tear; allanerly, solely; coupling, over, falling down; moyen, interests; din, noise; spunk, spark; bent sail, bent; feckless mints to duty, silly essays at duty. Of the errors of the first edition perpetuated in the subsequent editions one instance may be given: “convened in the mass,” whereas Boston wrote “convened in the manse.” Other interesting omissions are given in the British Weekly in the article already referred to.

editions of the Memoirs has appeared since. They constitute the twelfth volume of his collected works published in 1854. Probably the best edition is that edited by Rev. G. H. Morrison and published in 1899.⁶ The Memoirs is addressed to his children, and in the address, as originally written, there are a few sentences that do not appear in the printed editions. “Let not my recording the lowness of my beginning offend you,” he says; “for the lower I perceive the same to have been, it affords me the greater joy and rejoicing in that God, who hath done all things for me . . . As to what you may find recorded concerning any of ourselves; that ye would not wish; they were steps of providence to me, and may be useful to you through grace. The manuscripts, you will easily perceive, are not design’d for public view; and they are left in your own power. Moreover you would consider me writing them, as leaving this world, to have no more a portion in what is done under the sun, and as going into the other world, where many things here reckoned considerable, are of no weight nor value at all.”

Thomas Boston was born in the little town of Duns, which has the honour of being the birthplace of men renowned in the ecclesiastical world. Tradition says John Duns Scotus was a native of the parish; it is also the birthplace of Thomas MacCrie, the well-known biographer of Knox. It was in 1676 that Boston first saw the light. While still a boy his father was cast into prison for nonconformity, and Thomas spent a night with him; the memory of which often haunted him in after years. He was early sent to school, “and having a capacity for learning and being of a towardly disposition,” was kindly treated by the good dame who taught him first to master the mysteries of the alphabet. At the age of seven, he tells us, he read his Bible and had delight in reading it.⁷ In 1684 or 1685 he went to the grammar school of his native town, and while at this school he was a diligent attender at public worship, and gave what attention would be expected from a boy to the ministrations of the Episcopal incumbent. In 1687 he was taken by his father to a Presbyterian meeting in the Newton of Whitsome. The preacher was the Rev. Henry Erskine, the father of Ebenezer and Ralph, the two famous Secession preachers, and Boston heard for the first time a voice that called him to the consideration of eternal realities.⁸ The sermons that most impressed him were preached from the texts, “O generation of vipers who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” and “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” After this, he regularly attended Henry Erskine’s ministry at Revelaw, which was about four miles from Duns. “In the summer-time,” he says, “company could hardly be missed; and with them something to be heard, especially in the returning, that was for edification, to which I listened; but in the winter, sometimes it was my lot to go alone, without so much as the benefit of a horse to carry me through Blackadder water,

1. Memoirs of the Life, Time, and Writings of the Reverend and Learned Thomas Boston, A.M., sometime minister at Simprin, afterwards at Ettrick. New Edition with Introduction and Notes by the Rev. George H. Morrison, M.A., Dundee. Edinburgh, and London: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1899.

2. “Meanwhile I know nothing induced me to it, but the natural vanity of my mind; and curiosity as about some scripture histories. However, I am thankful, that it was at all made my choice early; and that it hath been the study of my ripest years, with which I would fain close my life if it were His will.” Memoirs, p. 7.

3. Years afterwards, in referring to this event, he says: “Little wast thou thinking, O my soul, on Christ 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.” Soliloquy of Man Fishing. Works V., p. 11.

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.” In the maturer experience of after years, he looks back and reviews the fervent feelings of these early days, and found that he was “raw and unexperienced, had much weakness and ignorance, and much of a legal disposition and way, then, and for a good time after, undiscerned,” but yet he could honestly say that he “was in good earnest concerned for a saving interest in Jesus Christ.” It may be interesting at this place to quote Boston as to the progress he had made at the grammar school and the subjects that were taught in such schools in his time. “I learned Latin rudiments, Despauter’s grammar, and all the authors, in verse or prose, then usually read in schools; and profited above the rest of my own class, by means of whom my progress was more slow. And before I left the school, I, generally, saw no Roman author, but what I found myself in some capacity to turn into English: but we were not put to be careful about proper English. Towards the end of that time, I was also taught Vossius’s Elements of Rhetoric and 15th May 1689 began the Greek, learned some parts of the New Testament, to wit, some part of John, of Luke, and of the Acts of the Apostles.”⁹ Boston was at this time only between thirteen and fourteen years of age, so that it will be admitted that he had made fair progress in education. Young Boston’s mind was now set on the ministry, but his father not having sufficient means to give him a university education, the door seemed shut in his face. But neither father nor son gave up hope altogether. Sometimes the way looked so dark that Boston thought of turning to a trade, but his father would not hear of it. At length, after two years, the way was opened and Boston entered Edinburgh University in 1691. Of his life at the University we know little, except that he applied himself with diligence in the pursuit of knowledge and practised economy to such an extent that at the end of his Arts course his expenses only amounted to £11. The result of this rigid economy bore fruit in after years in the weakly constitution that made life a heavy burden to him many a day. In 1694, he graduated in arts, and in the same year he received the bursary of the Presbytery of Duns. In the following year he began his theological course, and spent one session at the university.

(To be continued.)