Boston, THOMAS

Boston, THOMAS, a Scottish divine, was born at Duns, Berwickshire, 17th March 1676, son of a father who was imprisoned for nonconformity. Two years after leaving the grammar-school of his native town, he in 1691 entered the university of Edinburgh. He received license as a preacher in 1697, and was greatly appreciated by the serious portion of the community; but his uncompromising character prevented him from receiving a clerical charge for two years. As he puts it in his autobiography, he was, 'through the mercy of God, generally acceptable to the people, but could never fall into the good graces of those who had the stroke in the settling of parishes.' At length, in 1699, he was ordained minister of Simprin, Berwickshire, and in 1707 was translated to Ettrick, in Selkirkshire, where he died on the 20th May 1732. Of his works the one by which he was best known is the Fourfold State, published in 1720. It discourses of human nature in its fourfold state of primitive integrity (in Eden), entire depravity (by the fall), recovery begun on earth, and happiness or misery consummate hereafter. This work went through many editions, and was long recognised as a standard exposition of Calvinistic theology. The Crook in the Lot was a little book of a more attractive character, written in a quaint and striking style, and full of allusions to Bible history and biography. This book and his posthumous Autobiography (the latter published in 1776) were great favourites with the Scottish peasantry, and were to be found in almost every house. As a pastor, Boston was eminently laborious and deservedly popular. In the ecclesiastical courts he distinguished himself by his zeal in defence of the church's independence, and in the controversy regarding the Marrow of Modern Divinity (which was objected to as being too free in its offers of salvation) he was one of the ten ministers who declared their approval of that work (see MALLOW CONTROVERSY). As a theologian, Boston had a marked influence upon his own and succeeding generations. His language, sentiments, and characteristic modes of expressing the peculiarities of Calvinistic psychology, have coloured the style of Scottish preaching more than have those of any other writer of the same school. Although often displaying what we should now call narrowness, Boston exhibits also flashes of insight and beauty, quaint felicities of diction—as, for instance, when in The Crook in the Lot he warns the profligate against the possibility of a 'leap out of Delilah's lap into Abraham's bosom'—and an occasional shrewdness of thought, which render his works even yet worth studying.