Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/302

 and the people, lie was ordained minister, September 21, 1G99. In Simprin he continued conscientiously performing the duties of his calling till the year 1707, when, by synodical authority, he was transported to Ettrick. His introduction to his new charge took place on the 1st of May that year, the very day when the union between Scotland and England took effect; on which account he remarks that he had frequent occasion to remember it, the spirits of the people of Ettrick being imbittered on that event against the ministers of the church, which was an occasion of much heaviness to him, though he had never been for the union, but always against it from the very beginning. Simprin, now united to the parish of Swinton, both of which make a very small parish, contained only a few families, to whose improvement he was able greatly to contribute with comparatively little exertion, and the whole population seem to have been warmly attached to him. Ettrick, on the contrary, is a parish extending nearly ten miles in every direction, and required much labour to bring the people together in public, or to come in contact with them at their own house. Several of them, too, were society men or old dissenters, who had never joined the Revolution church from what they supposed to be radical defects in her constitution, as well as from much that had all along been offensive in her general administration. Of her constitution, perhaps, Mr Boston was not the wannest admirer, for he has told us in his memoirs, that, after having studied the subject of baptism, he had little fondness for national churches, strictly and properly so called, and of many parts of her administration he has again and again expressed decided disapprobation; but he had an undefined horror at separation, common to the greater part of the presbyterians of that and the preceding generation, which led him to regard almost every ether ecclesiastical evil as trifling. Of course, he was shocked beyond measure with the conduct of a few of the families of Ettrick, who chose to adhere to Mr John Macmillan, or Mr John Hepburn, and has left on record accounts of some interviews with them, shortly after entering upon his charge, which, we have no hesitation in saying, bring not only his candour, but his veracity, very strongly into question. He was, however, a conscientious and diligent student, and had already made great progress in the knowledge of the doctrine of grace, which seems to have been but imperfectly understood by many very respectable men of that period. In this he was greatly forwarded by a little book, "The Marrow of Modern Divinity," which he found by accident in the house of one of his parishioners in Simprin, and which had been brought from England by a person who had been a soldier there in the time of the civil wars. Of this book he says, "I found it to come close to the points I was in quest of, and showed the consistency of those which I could not reconcile before, so that I rejoiced in it as a light which the Lord had seasonably struck up to me in my darkness." The works of Jerome Zanchrius, Luther on the Gelations, and Beza's Confession of Faith, which he seems to have fallen in with at the same period, (that is, while he was yet in Simprin, about the year 1700,) also contributed greatly to the same end, and seems to have given a cast of singularity to his sermons, which was highly relished, and which rendered them singularly useful in promoting the growth of faith and holiness among his hearers. In 1702, he took the oath of allegiance to queen Anne, the sense of which, he says, he endeavoured to keep on his heart, but never after took another oath, whether of a public or private nature. He was a member of the first general assembly held under that queen in the month of March, 1703, of which, as the person that was supposed to be most acceptable to the commissioner, the earl of Seafield, Mr George Meldrum was chosen moderator. The declaration of the intrinsic power of the church was the great object of the more faithful part of her ministers at this time; but they were told by the leading party,