In addition to his best-known work, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, one of the religious classics of Scotland, he wrote an original little book, The Crook in the Lot, and a learned treatise on the Hebrew points.

His autobiography is an interesting record of Scottish life, full of sincerity and tenderness, and not devoid of humorous touches, intentional and otherwise.

In 1704 he found, while visiting a member of his flock, a book brought into Scotland by a commonwealth soldier, the Marrow of Modern Divinity, by Edward Fisher, a compendium of the opinions of leading Reformation divines on the doctrine of grace and the offer of the Gospel,[2] which set off the Marrow Controversy.

He was the only member of the assembly who entered a protest against the lightness of the sentence passed on John Simson, Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, who was accused of heterodox teaching on the Incarnation.

[2] He was born in Duns on 17 March 1676, son of John Boston (who suffered imprisonment in the cause of nonconformity) and Alison Trotter.

8 February 1696; was thereafter tutor to young Andrew Fletcher of Aberlady, and chaplain to his stepfather, Colonel James Bruce of Kennet; licen.

He and eleven others gave in a Representation and Petition to the General Assembly of 1721 against an Act passed in the previous year condemning The Marrow of Modern Divinity.

Boston's own writings, together with his devout life and exemplary pastoral labours, contributed greatly to the popularity of the doctrines contained in the Marrow.

[4]He married on 17 July 1700, Katherine (died 4 March 1737), fifth daughter of Robert Brown of Barhill, Culross, a medical practitioner, and had children Boston's autobiography is a record of Scottish life.