Burns and Religion

Abstract

According to the Westminster Confession (accepted by the Scottish parliament in 1643, and again in 1690, as the doctrine of the Church of Scotland) only ‘the Elect’, as chosen by God, are redeemed by Christ: theoretically, therefore, good works are irrelevant since all children of the sinner Adam are depraved from birth. Scottish theologians of the eighteenth century constantly reiterated this claim. For example, Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in its Fourfold State (1720) asserted that ‘even the new-born babe [is] a child of hell’ (cited by David Daiches, God and the Poets, Oxford, 1984, p. 134). Bums, an avid reader of theological works, described Boston’s book as ‘stupid’ (CL, 260) and ‘trash’ (CL, 318). The absurd antinomianism of Boston and likeminded ministers (Boston had preached in Ettrick) was not lost on Burns.