The eminent servant of the Lord, Thomas Boston laboured in the parish of Simprin for eight years and again in Ettrick for 25 years when at the age of 56 he passed away to be forever with the Lord.
We are told that the substance of the Fourfold State was preached from the pulpit of Simprin and that shortly after going to Ettrick it was recast and amplified and given from the pulpit there. These sermons were greatly blessed to those who heard them. If printed, thought Boston, might they not reach the many who never darkened Ettrick kirk. He would almost have been content with that. It was a lowly project but it determined him. He did not know what scattered multitudes were to be found and fed by the reading of the Fourfold State. If ever a book was steeped in prayer it was the Fourfold State. From January 1712 when Boston first put pen to paper for the final draft, it was daily spread before a throne of grace. At times it looked as if the book would never see the light; and it was not till 1720 that Boston handled a bound copy of his work. Almost immediately it took hold; new editions came pouring in. We are told that it was discussed in Edinburgh drawing-rooms; and that the shepherd read it on the hills. It made its way into Highland crofts. For more than a hundred years its influence on the religious life of Scotland was incalculable. The substance of the book is so orderly and clear, so rich in just and beautiful citation, so searching and here and there so softening; it is so strong in its appeals, so full, for all its doctrines, of warmth and human life; it is couched in language of the homeliest and truest ring, rising at times into unquestionable eloquence, that the secret of its acceptance is not far to seek. And yet to Boston that was not all the secret. “When I have considered the acceptance that book met with” he writes in 1730, “I could not but impute it to the over-ruling hand of kind Providence, that would needs have it so”.
I The State of Innocence
Boston begins his book with Man’s Original Righteousness — the State of Innocence based on Ecclesiastes 7:29, “Lo this only have I found, that God hath made man upright: but they have sought out many inventions”. He says that God made man habitually righteous; man was to make himself actually righteous; then the will of man was directed and naturally inclined to God and goodness, though mutable. His affections were orderly, pure and holy, which is a necessary part of that uprightness wherein man was created. It had power to do the good which he knew should be done, and which he was inclined to do, even to fulfil the whole law of God. There was nothing in the law but what was agreeable to his reason and will, as God made him. God set Adam’s will towards good only, yet He did not so fix and confirm its inclinations, that it could not alter. Confirmation in a righteous state is a reward of grace, given upon continuing righteous through the state of trial, and would have been given to Adam if he had stood out the time appointed for probation by the Creator; and accordingly is given to the saints upon account of the merits of Christ, who was obedient unto death; and herein believers have the advantage of Adam, that they can never totally nor finally fall away from grace. Man was then a very glorious creature; we have reason to suppose that as Moses’ face shone when he came down from the mount, so man had a lightsome and pleasant countenance, and beautiful body, while as yet there was no darkness of sin in him at all. There was no impurity to be seen without, no squint look in the eyes after any unclean thing, the tongue spoke nothing but the language of heaven, and in a word, the King’s son was “all glorious within” and his “clothing of wrought gold”.
The Fourfold State informs us that God reduced the law, which he gave in man’s creation into the form of a covenant, whereof perfect obedience was the condition; life was the thing promised, and death the penalty. How easy were these terms to him who had the natural law written in his heart, and that inclining him to obey this positive law, revealed to him, it seems, by an audible voice, the matter whereof was so very easy.
God promised Adam also eternal life in heaven to have been entered into when he should have passed the time of his trial upon earth, and the Lord should see meet to transport him into the upper paradise. This promise of life was included in the threatening of death; for while God says, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” it is in effect “If thou do not eat of it, thou shalt surely live”. And this was sacramentally confirmed by another tree in the garden called therefore “The Tree of Life” which he was debarred from when he had sinned; so that he needed nothing to be expressed to him in the covenant but what concerned the eating of the forbidden fruit. The death threatened was such as the life promised was, and that most justly namely, temporal, spiritual and eternal death. However, that day, when he took and did eat the forbidden fruit, his body got its death-wound and became mortal. Death also seized his soul; he lost his original righteousness and the favour of God. There was grace and free favour in the first covenant, though the exceeding riches of the grace, as the apostle calls it, were reserved for the second. It was certainly an act of grace, favour and admirable condescension in God to enter into a covenant, and such a covenant, with His own creature.
This man was God’s deputy governor in the lower world, and this his dominion was an image of God’s sovereignty. This was common to man and to woman, but man had one thing peculiar to him, namely, that he had dominion over the woman also (I Cor. 11:7). Man, being set down in a beautiful paradise, it was an act of infinite wisdom, and of grace too, to keep him from one single tree, as a visible testimony that he must hold all from his Creator as his great landlord; and so while he saw himself lord of the creatures, he might not forget that he was still God’s subject. Man was created with a free will to good which the tree of life was an evidence of, but his will was also free to evil, and the forbidden tree was to him a memorial thereof. His heart had nothing to reproach him with; conscience had nothing to do, but to direct, approve and feast him, and without there was nothing to annoy him. The happy pair lived in perfect amity, and though their knowledge was vast, true and clear, they knew no shame. Though they were naked there were no blushes in their faces, for sin the seed of shame was not yet known; and their beautiful bodies were not capable of injuries from the air, so they had no need of clothes which are originally the badges of our shame.
The Lord put all mankind’s stock, as it were, in one common ship, and as we ourselves would have done, He made our common father the pilot. God gave man ability to keep the law, but man lost it by his own fault. Mankind descending from Adam, by ordinary generation, sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression. The guilt is ours. How wonderful to see and know by the Gospel that free grace will fix those whom free will shook down to a gulf of misery. The proud, self-conceited professor has eyes behind to see his attainments, but no eyes within, no eyes before, to see his wants which would surely humble him. But such blind professors of religion are such a spectacle of commiseration as one would be who had set his palace on fire, and was glorying in a cottage which he had built for himself out of the rubbish, though so very weak that it could not stand against a storm. The heart which was once the temple of God is now turned into a den of thieves. Let our name be Ichabod for the glory is departed. Boston, then writes, sounding clearly the free offer of the Gospel, “Come, O sinner, look to Jesus Christ, the second Adam; quit the first Adam and his covenant; come over to the Mediator and Surety of the new and better covenant; and let your hearts say, Be thou our ruler, and let this breach be under thy hand”.
We have seen from the pen of Boston what man was as God made him — a lovely and happy creature; and so he proceeds to show “The Sinfulness of Man’s Natural State” from Genesis 6:5, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”.
It is observable to the reader that the Fourfold State is tinged with the Scriptural teachings of the Marrow of Modern Divinity; a book that Boston found in an old soldier’s cottage at Simprin in 1700 — a book he closely studied and relished.
(to be continued)