Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/300

 felt in the convincing and converting of many to the cause of Christ It is, indeed, the most useful of all his works. The discourses on the millennium are entirely practical and devotional, and though they want the straining for effect, and the ingenious speculations with which some have clothed this subject, and gained for themselves an ephemeral popularity for to all such trickery Dr Bogue had a thorough aversion they will be found strikingly to display the enlarged views and sterling good sense of their venerable author.

, an eminent doctrinal writer, was born in the town of Dunse, March 7th, 1676, and received the rudiments of his education at his native town, first under a woman who kept a school in his father's house, and afterwards under Mr Jamas Bullerwill, who taught what is called the grammar school. His father was a nonconformist, and, being imprisoned for his recusancy, retained the subject of this memoir in prison along with him, for the sake of company; which, notwithstanding his youth, seems to have made a lasting impression on the memory of young Boston. Whether the old man was brought at length to conform, we have not been able to learn; but during his early years, Mr Boston informs us that he was a regular attendant at church, "where he heard those of the episcopal way, that being then the national establishment." He was then, as he informs us, living without God in the world, and unconcerned about the state of his soul. Toward the end of summer, 1687, upon the coming out of king James's indulgence, his father carried him to a presbyterian meeting at Whitsome, where he heard the Rev. Mr Henry Erskine, who, before the Restoration, was minister of Cornhill, and father to the afterwards celebrated Messrs Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine. It was through the ministrations of this celebrated preacher, that Boston was first brought to think seriously about the state of his soul, being then going in the twelfth year of his age. After this he went back no more to the church till the curates were expelled, with whom, it was the general report of the country, no one remained after he became serious and in earnest about the salvation of his soul. While at the grammar school, La formed an intimacy with two boys, Thomas Trotter and Patrick Gillies, who regularly met with him, at stated times, in a chamber of his father's house, for reading the Scriptures, religious conference, and social prayer, "whereby," he says, "they had some advantage, both in point of knowledge and tenderness." Mr Boston made a rapid progress at the school, and before he left it, which was in the harvest of 1689, had gone through all the books commonly taught in such seminaries, and had even begun the Greek, in which language he had read part of John's gospel, Luke, and the Acts of the apostles, though he was then but in his fourteenth year. After leaving the grammar school, two years elapsed before he proceeded farther in his studies, his father being doubtful if he was able to defray the expense. This led to several attempts at getting him into a gratuitous course at the university, none of which had any success. In the mean time he was partly employed in the composing and transcribing law papers by a Mr Cockburn, a public notary, from which he admits that he derived great benefit in after life. All his plans for a gratuitous academical course having failed, and his father having resolved to strain every nerve to carry him through the classes, he entered the university of Edinburgh as a student of Greek, December 1st, 1691, and studied for three successive sessions. He took out his laureation in the summer of 1694, when his whole expenses for fees and maintenance, were found to amount to one hundred and twenty eight pounds, fifteen shillings and eight pence, Scots money, less than eleven pounds sterling. That same summer he had the bursary of the presbytery of Dunse conferred on him as a student of theology, and in the month of January, 1695, entered the theological class in the college of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr George Campbell, "a