Thomas Boston

1676-1732. Scottish Presbyterian minister and scholar. Born in Duns, Berwickshire, he read arts and divinity at Edinburgh and was a recognized Hebraist. After ordination he held pastorates in his native county and (most notably) at Ettrick, Selkirkshire, where he was installed on the day of the union with England in 1707. An English Puritan work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, greatly influenced him, and despite its ban because of its Arminianism, his own writings popularized its doctrines. Implicated in the “Marrow case,” he emerged without stain, demonstrating his profound theological thought. Leading a life of deep prayer, he performed many exemplary parochial tasks. Illness never prevented his preaching, and even on his last two Sundays, too feeble for the pulpit, he preached from the manse window on self-examination. His books are Human Nature in its Fourfold Estate (1720), Notes to the Marrow of Modern Divinity (1726), A View of the Covenant of Grace (1734), An Illustration of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion (1773), and many other treatises and volumes of sermons.