Free Grace AND a Free Gospel. IX

Image: Erskine Memorial Kirk, Stirling

Thomas Boston's discovery of the Marrow of Modern Divinity had led to the spread of the Marrow's evangelical doctrine among the younger ministers of the Church of Scotland. While the Marrowmen were left in their own parishes, and no processes were begun to depose them, it soon became clear that their opponents were not going to leave them in peace. Every effort was made to keep the Marrowmen from being transferred to more important charges in the Church of Scotland, and Boston found he was "tied down in Ettrick." Young men going forward to licence who held the Marrow theology were refused licence to preach, and members of the Synod of Fife suspected of being Marrowmen were required to re-subscribe to the Confession of Faith, adding a new clause condemning the Marrow "in view of the recent decision of the Assembly."
"We became strangers to our brethren, and as aliens and saw that our mothers had borne us men of contention." Boston complained.

The break came in 1733, when the Marrowmen, led by the Erskine brothers, seceded from the Church of Scotland, forming the 'Associate Presbytery', better known as the Secession Church. The unity of the Church of Scotland was broken, not to be mended from that day to this.

And the Marrow of Modern Divinity has passed into legend, as one of the great classics of the Scottish Church, although it was written by an English Puritan.