Background
He was born at Duns. His father, John Boston, and his mother, Alison Trotter, were both Covenanters.
He was born at Duns. His father, John Boston, and his mother, Alison Trotter, were both Covenanters.
He was educated at Edinburgh, and licensed in 1697 by the presbytery of Chirnside.
In 1699 he became minister of the small parish of Simprin, where there were only 90 examinable persons. Previously, he was a schoolmaster in Glencairn. Its object was to demonstrate the unconditional freeness of the Gospel.
lieutenant cleared away such conditions as repentance, or some degree of outward or inward reformation, and argued that where Christ is heartily received, full repentance and a new life follow.
On Boston"s recommendation, James Hog of Carnock reprinted The Marrow in 1718. And Boston also published an edition with notes of his own.
The Marrow men were marked by the zeal of their service and the effect of their preaching. As they remained Calvinists they could not preach a universal atonement.
Rather they were particular redemptionists.
In 1707 Boston was translated to Ettrick, Scotland. Of the Rev Thomas Boston, Edinburgh: Wm Oliphant,1827
Thomas Boston: His & Times, Andrew Thomson, 2004 reprint, Christian Focus Publications"
In Alice Munro"s short story, Number Advantages (The View from Castle Rock 2006), Boston is described briefly. Monro writes, "In his autobiography he speaks of his own recurring miseries, his dry spells, his sense of unworthiness and dullness even in the act of preaching the Gospel, or while praying in his study.." (pp 14–15).
In 1704 he found, while visiting a member of his flock, a book brought into Scotland by a commonwealth soldier, the Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher, a compendium of the opinions of leading Reformation divines on the doctrine of grace and the offer of the Gospel, which set off the Marrow Controversy. He was the only member of the assembly who entered a protest against the lightness of the sentence passed on John Simson, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, who was accused of heterodox teaching on the Incarnation.