John Newton
The last question I shall consider is whether true gospel humility, and an enlarged view of the grace of God in Christ triumphing over all obstacles, can ordinarily be attained without an experience of declensions, backslidings and repeated forgiveness. I dare say you will do me the justice to believe that I would not advise any one to run into sin in order to get a knowledge of his own heart. David broke his bones by running into sin; he obtained an affecting proof of his inability to stand in his own strength, and of the skill and goodness of his Physician, who healed him. Yet no one in his wits would break his bones for the sake of making experiments, even if he was ever so sure they would be well set again.
You think that a believer is never more humble in his own eyes, or admires Jesus more, than when he is filled with joy and peace. I readily allow that present impressions of Divine love are humbling; however, the direct tendency of gracious consolations in themselves is one thing; what evils they may afterwards produce, through the desperate depravity of our hearts, is another.
We have a memorable case in point to explain my meaning. The Apostle Paul’s recollection of his course while in a natural state and the unique manner of his conversion were evidently suited to make him a humble Christian, and he was so. By a special favour of the Lord, he was afterwards taken up into the third heaven. What he saw or heard there he has not told us, but surely he met with nothing that could have a tendency to make him proud. Doubtless he saw Jesus in His glory, and the humble, spiritual worship of heaven – a sight which we might deem sufficient to make him walk in self-abasement all the days of his life. But Paul, though an eminent saint, was still liable to the effects of indwelling sin; he was in danger of being exalted through the abundance of revelations. And in order to prevent it, the Lord, his wise and gracious keeper, saw fit to give him a messenger from Satan to buffet him.
Pride is so subtle that it can gather strength even from those gracious manifestations which seem directly calculated to mortify it; so dangerous that a messenger from Satan himself may be esteemed a mercy, if overruled and sanctified by the Lord to make or keep us more humble. Therefore I apprehend that they who appear most to adorn the gospel, in their outward lives, are conscious of many things between the Lord and their own souls
1A final part of a letter to a friend, taken with editing from Newton’s Works, vol 1. In last month’s article, Newton discussed the degree of faithfulness to light received from God that is consistent with the remnants of a depraved nature.
which cover them with shame, and that His tenderness and mercy to them, notwithstanding their perverseness, constrain them with admiration to adopt the language of Micah, “Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?” Yet we can never be too earnest in striving against sin or too watchful in abstaining from all appearance of evil, and they who wait upon the Lord may have the comfort of hoping that He will preserve them from such things as would dishonour their profession in the sight of men.
Believe likewise that, without such striking and repeated proofs of what is in their hearts, believers would not so feelingly enter into the spirit of Job’s confession, “Behold, I am vile!” Nor would they have such a lively sense of their obligations to the merciful care and faithfulness of their great Shepherd, or of their entire and absolute dependence upon Him for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. I find these considerations useful and necessary to reconcile me to my lot. The Lord knows what I need and what I can bear; gladly would I receive, and earnestly would I desire, more of comfort while here. But if I mourn now, I hope to be comforted in heaven; in the meantime it is more immediately necessary for me, both as a Christian and as a minister, that I should be humble. The Lord’s will be done. I cannot pretend to determine what ministers, or what body of people, come nearest the character of primitive times; but in my judgement they are the happiest who have the lowest thoughts of themselves, and in whose eyes Jesus is most glorious and precious.
Thomas Boston – His Life and Ministry1
5. Faithfulness in a Declining Age
F R Daubney
By the mid-1720s, the state of religion in Scotland was declining, partly due to the detrimental influence of the Union with England. After attending the General Assembly in 1726, a minister known as honest Woodrow later commented that he never saw a greater number of young faces in the Assembly. Their dress, habits and gravity were not what one would expect. He questioned what they were being taught in the divinity colleges and feared that the following years would reveal its sad influence. It was not long before this became evident.
In 1729, Professor Simson of Glasgow University, who had been admon-
1The final part of a paper at last year’s Theological Conference. Last month’s article spoke of some of Boston’s difficulties in his ministry and the Publication of The Fourfold State.
ished previously for unsound doctrine, became bolder. He was teaching his Divinity students Arianism, which maintains that the Son of God was created by the Father and was neither co-eternal nor co-substantial with the Father; in so doing it also denies the doctrine of the Trinity. Simpson was subtle and skilful in his arguments and difficult to pin down. Despite this, he was suspended by the General Assembly from preaching and teaching. Several members of the Assembly thought he should be deposed, but they subsequently acquiesced in the Assembly’s decision.
Boston could not let this pass. He rose to his feet arguing that Professor Simson should have been deposed from the ministry for the dishonour done to “our glorious Redeemer, the great God and our Saviour”. He said, “I cannot help thinking that the cause of Jesus Christ as to the great and essential point of His supreme Deity is at the bar of the Assembly requiring justice; and as I am shortly to answer at His bar for all that I say or do, I cannot give my assent to the decision of this act. On the contrary, I find myself obliged to offer a protest against it. And therefore, in my own name and in the name of all that adhere to me, I crave leave to dissent against the decision of this act.” He was alone in his dissent, no other member of the Assembly stood by him. The Moderator persuaded him, for the peace of the Church, to have his dissent simply marked, and it could be raised again at a subsequent meeting if he was still of the same mind. After speaking to friends that evening he did not insist on it being raised again.
Several worthy ministers later deeply regretted that they had not stood with Boston in his dissent. Some went further and said that it was their greatest sorrow that a formal protest had not been entered against the Assembly’s decision. It is, however, a matter of record that Professor Simson never preached or taught divinity students again.
As a student of divinity in Edinburgh, Boston had learned Hebrew and, when he was in Simprin, he began to study the Hebrew Bible, which he did for the rest of his life. He became interested in the use of the Hebrew accents, which are dots and other marks added to the letters on the page. The accents are guides to pronunciation and a commentary on the true sense of the text. They were not in the original Hebrew text, and they are not to be found in the Old Testament of the Jewish synagogue, nor did the early Christian Fathers refer to them. It seems that they were an invention of Jewish scholars in the early centuries of our era, which is something known today but was not known to Boston.
In 1713 he began to study the accents and, after three years, he could understand them a little. With persistence he became quite expert in interpreting their use and felt that they opened up difficult passages to him.
Furthermore, he was convinced that the accents were divine in origin and necessary to understanding the genuine sense of Scripture. They became a passion to him, and he worked on a book on the accents which was printed in Amsterdam six years after his death. His conviction that the accents had divine authority was a dream and, sadly, his work never had any influence on Hebrew scholarship.
It was during the last years of his life that he preached the sermons on affliction which were published as The Crook in the Lot. It seemed to those who heard him that his preaching had become more fragrant and sweet. The people of his congregation could clearly see that the health of their minister was declining, and they expected that the communion season of 1731 would be his last. People from all around came to be at that solemn and poignant occasion; one of his elders gave hospitality and accommodation to 80 people. Writing in his Memoirs of that occasion, Boston tells us that 777 tokens were distributed to communicants. All of this great assembly came together to remember the death of the Saviour and to honour His renowned ambassador, Thomas Boston.
Boston was never a robust man. He suffered from fainting attacks and vomiting from his youth. In later years he suffered from scurvy, caused by a deficiency of vitamin C; this resulted in chronic fatigue and his teeth falling out. He suffered from gravel, which is the formation of small stones in the kidney, which, when passing out of the body, result in extraordinary pain. In addition to all that, he developed a shake in his head and occasionally in his whole body. Apart from his poor health, he had the care of his wife and suffered the death of six of his 10 children, yet never once did he miss an occasion to preach on the Sabbath day. He sat when he was too weak to stand in the pulpit and, in April 1732, when he was even too weak for that, he preached from the manse window. His last two sermons were on the need for self-examination.
On 20 May 1732, he died, at the age of 56, and was buried in the churchyard at Ettrick, where there is now a large monument in his memory. Katherine Boston lived for only a few years after her husband. Their son, Thomas, one of the four surviving children, was 19 and a divinity student when his father died. He was licensed at that young age and, in April, 1733, 11 months after his father’s death, he was ordained and inducted into the Ettrick congregation.
How shall we sum up Thomas Boston? He was frail, timid, tried and unwell. His life, walk and conversation were entirely taken up with eternal realities. His preaching and writing were blessed to multitudes of souls in his own day and to succeeding generations. He furthered the cause of truth and
often stood alone against the downgrading of Biblical doctrine. Truly, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that . . . the power may be of God, and not of us”.
At the outset of his ministry, when considering his calling, Boston wrote in his Soliloquy on Man Fishing, “What an honourable thing it is to be fishers of men! How great an honour shouldst thou esteem it, to be a catcher of souls! We are workers together with God, says the apostle. O my soul, bless thou the Lord. Lord, what am I, or what is my father’s house, that Thou hast brought me to this?”
How can we follow in the footsteps of such a man? Should it not be by following the command of the Saviour, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God”, and then the injunction of the apostle Paul, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God? Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth”.