The acquaintance I had with him, and the frequent opportunities I had of hearing him preach, I look upon as one of the greatest privileges I was favoured with in my early days, and which I still reflect on with great pleasure. He was indeed one of the most powerful preachers of the gospel I ever heard open a mouth. It is true he was no Boanerges as to his voice, his delivery being grave and deliberate. Yet there was a majestic energy in it, which, together with his venerable and comely aspect, made no small impression to his advantage on the minds of them who had the pleasure of hearing him.
There were few men, if any, in his day who courted popularity less than he did; nay, he rather shunned it. But, like his shadow, it followed him wherever he went, for his ministrations were savoury and acceptable to all who had a relish for the truth as it is in Jesus, and a love to that holiness of heart and life which the belief of it never fails to produce in the minds of all the children of God.
Though he usually wrote his sermons as full as he intended to preach them, yet this was not always the case: for some of his sermons printed a good many years ago from his notes, which I myself heard him preach and took him a full hour to deliver, may be read, even deliberately, in near the half of that time. One reason of which is this: the Scriptures which he brought as proofs of the points he was handling are only cited chapter and verse in his notes,^2 and he left several enlargements on them to delivery, for he had a talent peculiar to himself in pointing out the propriety of such proofs. And his more than ordinary critical knowledge of the original languages in which the Scriptures were written enabled him, in a brief but comprehensive way, to glance at the meaning of the Spirit of God in them, which was both surprising and edifying to the hearers. Could this have been recovered, it would have added greatly to the beauty of these discourses; but neither this, nor the lively, spirited manner in which they were delivered, can be put in print and set before the reader. But where the Scripture proofs are not inserted at full length, and only chapter and verse cited, if the reader will be at the pains to turn to his Bible, as he goes along in reading, he will find himself amply repaid for his pains, by the satisfaction it will give him. And it will convince him of the justness of what I have now suggested.
1This account of Thomas Boston’s preaching was given by Thomas Davidson of Braintree, Essex. It has been taken from Boston’s Life in Erasmus Middleton’s Biographia Evangelica, vol 4, pp 256-7. Davidson was an “eminent Dissenting minister” who had sat under Boston’s ministry in the 1720s. A letter which he wrote to Boston’s grandson in 1776, giving a description of Boston’s dissent at the 1729 General Assembly, is included in the the Banner of Truth Trust edition of Boston’s Memoirs (pp 513-5).
2In the sermon printed above, the references for Boston’s numerous chapter and verse citations have been supplied.