Queries agreed to by the Commission of the General Assembly, and put to those Ministers who submitted a Representation a
Queries agreed to by the Commission of the General Assembly, and put to those Ministers who submitted a Representation and Petition against the 5th and 8th Acts of Assembly 1720, with the Answers given by these Ministers to those Queries.
ADHERING to and holding, as here repeated, our subscribed Answer given to the Reverend Commission, when called by them to receive these Queries, we come to venture, under the conduct of the faithful and true Witness who has promised the Spirit of truth to lead his people into truth, to give an answer to those Queries. To which, before we proceed, we crave leave to represent that the title prefixed to it, namely: “Queries to be put to Mr. James Hog, and other Ministers, who gave in a Representation in Favour of The Marrow, to the General Assembly, 1721,” as well as that prefixed to the Commission’s overture about this affair, has a native tendency to divert and bemist the reader, to expose us, and to turn the matter on its proper hinge, by giving a wrong colour to our Representation, as if the chief design of it was to plead, not for the precious truths of the gospel, which we conceive to be wounded by the condemnatory act, but for The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which, though we value it as a good and useful book, and do not doubt that the Church of God may be much edified by it, as we ourselves have been, yet it never came into our minds to hold it or any other private writing, faultless, nor to put it on a level with our approved standards of doctrine.