AP

Period 4 1697-1698“They were satisfied, and should have had their Christian right to choose their minister.”

On preaching Christ

Boston was twenty-one years old when he was licensed by his local presbytery to preach the gospel. His first sermon was on Psalm 50:22, “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!” He was a passionate speaker, and in his own words, he would have “set fire to the devil’s nest.”

As Boston reflected on his first sermons, there was, by his own admission, something amiss, despite his zeal. It was at this time that another minister, John Dysert, suggested to Boston that if he “entered on preaching of Christ, you would find it very pleasant.” Dysert himself was to face opposition to his preaching, and at Coldingham he carried pistols into the pulpit!

Yet, thank God for Dysert’s little word of encouragement! Boston said it was “the first hint given me, by the good hand of my God, towards the doctrine of the gospel.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) once cited Bishop Lavington as saying: “We have long been attempting to reform the nation by moral preaching. With what effect! None. On the contrary, we have dexterously preached the people into downright infidelity. We must change our voice; we must preach Christ and him crucified; nothing but the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.” In and of itself, the law is powerless to change us. It seems that in Boston’s early preaching he had been zealously pressing upon people how they ought to live and what they must do, but with little reference to the new life in Christ.

Christ keeps us from preaching mere morals or therapies. He is the key to salvation and to living. We realise that the purpose of preaching the law to the unregenerate is, ultimately, to lead them to Christ. And the purpose of preaching the law to the regenerate is so that they will become more conformed to the likeness of Christ. In this way, the Bible’s commands are never separated from Christ, but come within the context of who we are, or whose we are.

The next time Boston preached, he was so nervous that he could not look at the people gathered. In fact, he nearly closed his eyes whilst preaching! If he hoped to receive some encouragement from preaching Christ, then he was disappointed because the opposite happened, as a prominent person within the parish treated Boston with contempt, accusing him of being a “railer,” and a follower of Henry Erskine.

Boston could have easily shrunk back under the withering criticism of such an intimidating man. Yet, it only seems to have strengthened him in the truth of God’s Word and filled him with greater boldness to proclaim it, as he ought.

Timothy seems to have faced similar opposition. The Apostle Paul had to urge him, “to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Tim. 1:6-7).” Boston’s association with Henry Erskine was meant as a smear on Boston’s character and judgment. But we ought always to stand on the side of the Lord – and with all who truly belong to Him – and do so without shame.

A man of principle, moulded by God’s Word

The Lord Jesus said to His disciples that they were to be as innocent as doves (Matt. 10:16). It is a call to integrity in every part of our lives. Elsewhere, Proverbs 10:9 says, “Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.” During this period of Boston’s life, the Scriptures were increasingly moulding Boston’s character and principles, even when it came at a cost. 

            At this time, there was a terrible practice of patronage, whereby the local heritors had to give their approval before a local congregation could accept a minister. Such a practice was elitist, and harmed the cause of Christ, as most patrons were hostile or indifferent to true preaching of the gospel. Some churches had what became known as “Laird’s loft” – a private gallery or pew reserved for the landowner and his family. Yet, James 2:1-4 says,

“My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. ² For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, ³ and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” ⁴ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

They shall have their Christian right

The ungodly practice of patronage was about to have an impact upon Boston. Having been licensed to preach the gospel by his Presbytery, it looked like he may settle at the church in Foulden. However, the local lord, Lord Ross, needed to give his approval, and before doing this he requested a meeting with Boston. Boston said: “I would have been content to have been providentially led to have preached in my Lord’s hearing: but to go to him directly on that purpose was what I could never digest… [T]he parish… should have their Christian right to choose their minister.”

In this way, Boston refused to see Lord Ross unless God would make the way possible. In the end, it wasn’t to be, and Boston never went to Foulden. He stood by his principles founded on the Bible, over and against convenience or pragmatics. He did this even when it meant that he had to stay out in the cold.

The Secession Church

The issue of patronage was to become a significant issue in the Church of Scotland in the following decades. The Church had long allowed presbyteries to fill church vacancies, if the vacancy continued for too long. The Presbyteries would do this in consultation with the congregation. Yet in 1732, the General Assembly voted to limit any consultation to heritors and elders, with the congregation severely limited in its rights to call a minister. For Boston and others, this brought dishonour on Christ as the Head of the Church, and it removed the right of God’s people to choose their pastor.

The issue continued to be a sore point for many decades, and in 1733, a year after Boston’s death, Boston’s friend and son of Henry Erskine, Ebenezer Erskine, was rebuked and admonished by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He had declared that the Church had given “the power of electing ministers… [into] the hands of a set of men who are generally disaffected to the power of godliness, to the doctrine, discipline, worship, and government of this church.” He went on to say that such a situation made the sacred privileges of the Church to be “rendered exceeding cheap.”

Erskine submitted a protest against the Church’s admonition of him, but he was not given the opportunity to speak at the Assembly. Instead, his objections were merely written down and submitted to the Assembly Clerk, where they may have remained unseen, except that they accidentally fell to the floor and in picking them up someone noticed the explosive nature of his claims. Eventually, Erskine and his supporters were suspended from their ministries. This led to them forming an Associate Presbytery, known as the First Succession, by the end of 1733.

Although the Church made some moves to ensure that a minister was not placed in a parish contrary to the will of a congregation, by 1735, Erskine and three other ministers – there were over a thousand ministers in Scotland at the time – decided to establish their own churches. By 1737, they had fifteen congregations, and by 1740 several more ministers from the Church of Scotland had left and joined the Succession Church.

John Wilison (1680-1750), who stayed within the Church of Scotland and was minister at Dundee, said in 1744: “It is well known that the church of Scotland hath ever since her reformation remonstrated against patronages, and asserts in her 2nd book of Discipline, chap. 12… the intruding of persons this way into churches, hath no ground in the word of God, but is contrary thereto… Patronages are neither agreeable to the rules of God’s word, nor to the apostolical practice: seeing it is evident from the word, that it was only the church herself, with her officers, that exercised the power of nominating and electing ministers and officers to the church, according to the authority derived to them from Christ their Head and Founder.”

Although the Succession Church grew in the decades following her split from the established Church, it also suffered from narrow-mindedness With regard to gospel preaching. It refused to cooperate with George Whitefield when he came to Scotland in 1741, because Whitefield would not break off working with the established Church. Within a few decades the Secession Church itself had splintered into more groups. With regard to patronage, it would continue to be a problem in the Church of Scotland until 1874, when the Church Patronage (Scotland) Act was passed, which declared that “the right of electing and appointing ministers to vacant churches and parishes in Scotland is hereby declared to be vested in the congregations.”

Grief over pastors of ungodly character

For Boston, however, there were further disappointments when the church at Abbay also did not call him. Boston had grown to love the believers of Abbay. Instead, the call looked like going to a minister who happened to be the Laird of Abbay – and who had the right social connections. To compound Boston’s grief, this man was, in Boston’s opinion, “weak and untender” and accused of drunkenness. Once again, to the grievance of many local people, the congregation was denied its right to call a pastor of its choosing to shepherd the flock in God’s Word.

In the end, it was a third minster, Mr George Home, who was called, but the whole situation reeked of the problems of patronage and its lack of biblical warrant.

There are two offices in the Bible that are regulated: overseer and deacon. God’s Word gives clear qualifications for those who are to be overseers. 1 Timothy 3:1-7 lists amongst other things, that an overseer must be “above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.” Overseers are to serve as under-shepherds of Christ Jesus, the chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4). This means humbly serving, following the example of Christ Jesus, the servant-King (Mark 10:41-45).

Pray for the ministers and elders of your church to be, as Paul says he was, like “a nursing mother taking care of her own children (1 Thess. 2:7).”

– Graham Barnes