Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/303

 that they already possessed it, and that to make an act asserting what they possessed, was only to waste time. While this very assembly, however, was in the midst of a discussion upon an overture for preventing the marriage of Protestants with papists, the commissioner, rising from his sent, dissolved the assembly in her majesty's name. "This having come," Boston remarks, "like a clap of thunder, there were from all corners of the house protestations offered against it, and for asserting the intrinsic power of the church, with which," he adds, "I joined in: but the moderator, otherwise a most grave and composed man, being in as much confusion as a schoolboy when beaten, closed with prayer, and got away together with the clerk, so that nothing was then got marked. This was one of the heaviest days," he continues, "that ever I saw, beholding a vain man trampling under the privileges of Christ's house, and others crouching under the burden; and I could not but observe how Providence rebuked their shifting the act to assert as above said, and baffled their design in the choice of the moderator, never a moderator since the revolution to this day, so far as I can guess, having been so ill-treated by a commissioner." This reflection in his private journal, however, with the exception of an inefficient speech in his own synod, appears to be all that ever Boston undertook for the vindication of his church on this occasion. It does not indeed appear that his feelings on this subject were either strong or distinct, as we find him at Ettrick, in the month of January, 1708, declaring that he had no scruple in observing a fast appointed by the court, though he thought it a grievance that arose from the union, and the taking away of the privy council. On this occasion he acknowledges that many of his hearers broke off and left him, several of whom never returned, but he justifies himself from the temper of the people, who, had he yielded to them in this, would have dictated to him ever afterwards. This same year he was again a member of the General Assembly, where application was made by persons liable to have the abjuration oath imposed upon them for an act declaring the judgment of the Assembly regarding it. The Assembly refused to do any thing in this matter; which was regretted by Mr Boston, and he states it as a just retribution which brought it to ministers' own doors in 1712, only four years afterwards. On this occasion also he was in the Assembly, but whether as a spectator or a member he does not say. The lawfulness of the oath was in this Assembly keenly disputed, and Boston failed not to observe that the principles on which the answers to the objections were founded were of such latitude, that by them any oath might be made passable. They were indeed neither more nor less than the swearer imposing his own sense upon the words employed, which renders an oath altogether nugatory. In this manner did Principal Carstairs swear it before the justices in Edinburgh, to the great amusement of the Jacobites, and being clear for it, he, in the assembly, by his singular policy, smoothed down all asperities, and prevented those who had not the same capacity of conscience from coining to any thing like a rupture with their brethren, for which cause, says Boston, I did always thereafter honour him in my heart! Boston, nevertheless, abhorred the oath, and could not bring his mind to take it, but determined to keep his station in the church, till thrust out of it by the civil authorities. He made over to his eldest son a house in Dunse, which he had inherited from his father, and made an assignation of all his other goods to his servant, John Currie, so that, when the law took effect, he might elude the penalty of five hundred pounds sterling, that was attached to the neglect or the refusal to take the oath within a prescribed period. The memory of the late persecuting reigns was, however, still fresh, and no one appeared willing to incur the odium of imitating them; and, so far as we know, the penalty was never in one single instance