His father was ordained minister of the united parishes of Fetlar and North Yell, in Shetland, in 1729, and young John was then sent to his grandfather's manse at Torphichen, Linlithgowshire.
There he received a parish school education, and then went to the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated MA on 27 April 1742.
[2] Bonar died at Perth 21 December 1761, aged 39, from what his son James called 'an inflammatory fever'.
In 1750 he printed anonymously Observations on the Conduct and Character of Judas Iscariot (reprinted in 1822); and in 1752 a prominent sermon on the Nature and Necessity of Religious Education, which was preached before the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge.
[2] In 1755 Bonar published anonymously An Analysis of the moral and religious Sentiments contained in the writings of Sopho (i.e. Lord Kames) and David Hume, Esq., addressed to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a work that has sometimes been wrongly attributed to Rev.
[2] In 1760 Bonar preached on Nature and Tendency of the Ecclesiastical Constitution in Scotland before the synod of Perth and Stirling.