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Boston’s next chapter is ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ (Matthew 25:34) Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ It is observable, He says not ‘Ye blessed of the Father’ but ye blessed of my Father, to show us that all blessings are derived by us from the Father, the fountain of blessing, as He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we are blessed. Now, we can but speak as children of these things, which the day will fully discover. Boston goes on to write of the white robes of the saints and their kingly authority. Then we are told that it will be the consummate freedom of their will, to be forever unalterably determined to good. Absolute innocence will then be restored. There is nothing upon earth more glorious than a kingdom, nothing more venerable than the priesthood; and both meet together in the glorified state of the saints. The remembrance of the cross will sweeten the crown, and the remembrance of their travel through the wilderness will put an additional verdure on the fields of glory, while they walk through them, looking back on the day when they went mourning without the sun. Patience has had its perfect work, and there is no use for it there. Faith is turned into sight, and hope is swallowed up in the ocean of sensible and full enjoyment. There they rest day or night but their work is their rest, and continual recreation, and toil and weariness have no place there. They rest in God, having the full enjoyment of God, and uninterrupted communion with Him. Eternal sunshine beautifies this better country, but there is no scorching heat there. No clouds shall be seen there forever, yet it is not a land of drought, the trees of the Lord’s planting are set by the rivers of waters. Whatever contentions are among the saints now, no vestige of their former jarrings shall remain there. Love to God and to one another shall be perfected; and those of them who stood at the greatest distance here will joyfully embrace and delight in one another there. Eden was the most pleasant spot of the uncorrupted earth, and paradise the most pleasant spot of Eden; but what is earth in comparison with heaven; the glorified saints are advanced to the heavenly paradise. Never did a kingdom afford of such a precious treasure, nor a treasure of such variety. Now, all things are theirs in respect of right, then shall all things be theirs in possession. The society of the saints among themselves, will be no small part of heaven’s happiness. Here some of them are so situated that they seem to dwell alone. Boston is assured that there we shall see Adam and Eve, in the heavenly paradise freely eating of the tree of life. There we shall see our godly friends, relations, and acquaintances, pillars in the temple of God, to go no more out from us; and it is more than probable that the saints will know one another in heaven; at least they will know their friends, relations, and those they were acquainted with on earth, and such as have been most eminent in Church. Why should one question that husbands and wives, parents and children will know one another in glory? Yet that knowledge will be purified from all earthly thoughts and affections (Genesis 2:23/24) (I Thess 2:19) (Matthew 17:4). Boston makes no question but there will be the use of speech in heaven, the saints speaking forth his praises with an audible voice. As for language we shall understand what it is when we come thither. Paul, when caught up to the third heaven, heard unrepeatable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Moses and Elias, on the mount with Christ, talked with Him, and spake of His decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Then we read of the angels.
As we derive our grace from the Lamb, so we shall derive our glory from Him too; the man Christ being the centre of the divine glory in heaven. His glorious presence in heaven, then must needs raise their graces to perfection, and elevate their capacities. The saints, now, in the world, experience that the presence of God can make a little heaven of a sort of hell. How great then must the glory of heaven be, by His presence there in glory! This glorious presence of God in heaven will put a glory on the saints themselves, the Sun of Righteousness shining in His meridian brightness on the streets of the city paved with pure gold. ‘For now we see through a glass darkly (I Corr. 13:12); but then face to face. Here our sight is mediate, as by a glass, in which we see not the things themselves, but the images of things; but there we shall have an immediate view of God and of the Lamb. They shall see Jesus Christ, God and man, with their bodily eyes, as He will never lay aside the human nature; there we shall see, with our eyes, that very body which was born of Mary at Bethlehem, and crucified at Jerusalem between two thieves. Then shall we remember that the waters of wrath which he was plunged into are the wells of salvation from which we draw all our joy; they have got the cup of salvation in exchange for the cup of wrath His Father gave Him to drink, which His sinless human nature shivered at; how will their hearts leap within them, burn with seraphic love, like coals of juniper, and the arch of heaven ring with their songs of salvation! They will be no more entertained with sips and drops, but filled with the fullness of God. In this life the saints had their temptations and fiery trials, and at times not without fear of falling into the lake of fire; but now, by Christ, in His eternal love, they are put beyond all hazard.
Boston says much more of the blessedness of the people of God in heaven, using beautiful illustrations and language superb as if sweetened by the fragrance of heaven. I am only giving fragments of each chapter. Be sure and read it all, every chapter and verse; let us read the Fourfold State prayerfully, and by the grace and blessing of God, our poor withered souls will be enriched thereby.
Now we come to the last chapter of this most precious book, the heading of this chapter is ‘Hell’. ‘Then shall he say to them on the left hand, depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:11). The punishment of the wicked is twofold, the punishment of loss, in separation from God and Christ. ‘Depart from me’ and the punishment of sense, in most exquisite and extreme torments. Hell, everlasting fire is said to be prepared for the devil and his angels — reprobate angels who fell with Beelzebub, and became devils. They sinned and were condemned to hell before man sinned. The damned hearkened to Satan’s temptations and they must partake in his torments, his works they would do, and they must receive the wages. Many a lash in the dark doth conscience give the wicked, which the world doth not hear of; and what is that but the never dying worm already begun to gnaw them. These drops of wrath are terrible forebodings of the full shower which is to follow. God meets the wicked here in time, with rods in the way of their sin, as it were striking them back; yet they rush forward. What can be more like hell, where the Lord is always smiting and the damned always sinning against Him? Adversity and prosperity, poverty and wealth, the want of ordinances and the enjoyment of them, do all but nourish the corruptions of many. Their vicious stomachs corrupt whatever they receive, and all does but increase noxious humours. Christ’s eyes then will cast flames of fire on them; and His words will pierce their hearts, like enamoured arrows. The full enjoyment of God is the highest pinnacle of happiness the creature is capable of arriving at: to be fully and finally separated from Him, must then be the lowest step of misery which the rational creature can be reduced to. To be cast off by men, by good men, is distressing; what must it then be, to be rejected by God, of goodness itself? In their separation from God, all peace is removed far away from them, and pain of body and anguish of soul, succeed to it; all joy goes and unmixed sorrow settles in them; all quiet and rest separate from them, and they are filled with horror and rage; hope flies away, and despair seizes them; common operations of the Spirit, which now restrain them, are withdrawn forever, and sin comes to its utmost height. This separation from God is the very hell of hell. No sleep to refresh the weary there, no pleasant company to comfort or cheer up the sorrowful; no offer of Christ there, no pardon, no peace, no wells of salvation in the pit of destruction. The doors of earth and heaven both are shut against them at once; this will create then unspeakable anguish while they shall live under an eternal gnawing after happiness, which they certainly know shall never be in the least measure satisfied, all doors being closed on them. Who then can imagine how this separation from God shall cut the damned to the heart? How they will roar and rage under it! and how it will sting and gnaw them through the ages of eternity! It is the opinion of some that every person in heaven and hell shall hear and see all that passes in either state. Boston says that we have ground from the Word of God to conclude that the damned shall have a very exquisite knowledge of the happiness of the saints in heaven. The rich man in hell seeing Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. How will the songs of the blessed, in their enjoyment of God, make the damned mourn under their separation from God! The Gospel offer slighted will make a hot hell and the loss of an offered heaven will be a sinking weight on the spirits of unbelievers in the pit. Some will remember that they had the pen in their hand, as it were, to sign the marriage contract between Christ and their souls; but, unhappily they dropped it, and turned back from the Lord to their lusts again. Others will remember that they thought themselves sure of heaven and that they were above examining their state, which was their ruin; but then, they will in vain wish that they had reputed themselves the worst of the congregation and curse the fond conceit they had of themselves, and that others had of them too. Thus it will sting the damned, that they might have escaped the loss. By whomsoever men are rejected upon earth, they ordinarily find some pity, but if you be thus separated from God you will find no pity from any in heaven; none will pity you in hell, where there is no love, but loathing; all being loathed by God, loathing Him and loathing one other; yet some are as careless in this matter as if they were incapable of thought.
‘I am disposed’, says Boston, ‘to dispute what kind of fire that it is into which the damned will depart, to be tormented forever, whether a material fire or not; neither will I meddle with the question, ‘Where is it’? It is enough that the worm that never dieth and the fire that is never quenched, will be found somewhere by impenitent sinners.’ Whatever kind of fire it is, it is more vehement and terrible than any fire we on earth are acquainted with. It is not simply called ‘a fire’ but ‘the lake of fire and brimstone,’ ‘a lake of fire burning with brimstone,’ than which one can imagine nothing more dreadful and hell fire will not only pierce into the bodies but directly into the souls of the damned. Nay, God Himself will be a consuming fire in the souls and bodies. Eternity is an ocean where we shall never see the shore, it is a deep where we shall find no bottom, for the creature it is a beginning without a middle, a beginning without an end, a continual succession of ages, a glass always running which shall never run out. The damned filled with hatred and rage against God will roar forever, like wild bulls in a net, and fill the pit with blasphemies forever more. The following is worthy of Boston, ‘The Holy Jesus bore the wrath of God without so much as one unbecoming thought of God and far less any one unbecoming word’.
Then Boston gives most solemn, alarming warnings. He says, ‘What? Is heaven a fable, or hell a false alarm? Sin in you is the seed of hell, and if the guilt and reigning power of it be not removed in time, they will bring you to the second death in eternity. Boston sets the terrors of hell as well as the joys of heaven before us all, to stir us up to a cordial receiving of Christ, with all His salvation; and he concludes the Fourfold State with the tremendously solemn words, ‘Thus far of man’s eternal state, which, because it is eternal, admits no succeeding one forever’.
To ourselves as a church, as well as to others, we say, if we lived according to our profession, ministers, office-bearers, and members, if we read our Bible more, if we prayerfully read and studied the Fourfold State by Thomas Boston more frequently, and if we relished secret prayer, we would not be the withered dwarfs in saving, vital religion, that we are; we would be ‘fat and full of sap, and aye, be flourishing.’
It is said that the writings of Boston had more spiritual influence on the Highland (and we would add, the Island) mind, than the writings of any other lowlander. We are also told that Rabbi Duncan, Professor of Hebrew at the New College, Edinburgh, once asked a student what he was reading. The student said ‘Boston’s Fourfold State.’ Doctor Duncan was silent for a little, and then said, ‘Boston was a commonplace genius; remember — not a commonplace man, but a commonplace genius’. This estimate of Boston is true.
Recently, in the wonderful providence of God, I was kindly asked to supply our pulpit in Edinburgh. I was not long in that city, when again, in the divine providence, christian friends offered to take me to Simprim and Ettrick, which kind invitation I gladly accepted. There, inside the ruins of Boston’s church in Simprim, I stood where the servant of Christ first preached the substance of the Fourfold State. From Simprim we went to Ettrick. There is a church on the site where Boston’s church was. With my friends I stood where Boston again preached his sermons, which we have in this precious book. My christian friends and I stood at Boston’s grave beside the church. On his gravestone, a monument erected to his memory, is the inscription:—
As a testimony of esteem for the Revd. Thomas Boston, Senior.
Whose private character was highly respectable; whose public labours were blessed to many; and whose valuable writings have contributed much to promote the advancement of Vital Christianity; this monument (by the permission of relatives) is erected by a religious and grateful Public A.D. 1806.
He was born at Duns, March 17th 1676, ordained to the pastoral charge of Simprim Sept. 21st 1699; removed from thence to Ettrick, May 1st 1707 and died May 20th 1732, aged 56 years; leaving a widow and four children.
From his grave, I went along to the out-houses; the walls seem to be the original ones, and I went inside two of them which were open. I was remembering Boston’s diary, where he writes, ‘I sometimes went into the out-houses to weep, so that my dear children would not be seeing me’. Anyone, reading his diary, can see that Boston had his deep sorrows and great afflictions, which he received with quiet christian submission to the will of God.
Let us be sure that we will all advise and exhort young and old to read and pray over the Fourfold State. This is a book, most suitable for the young, middle-aged, and old, in these modern times, 1979.
The following is from the pen of Jonathan Edwards, ‘I have read Mr Boston’s Fourfold State of Man, and liked it exceedingly well. I think he herein shows himself to be a truly great divine.’