Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Poetical Works of the Reverend and Learned Ralph Erskine, A. M., Minister of the Gospel in Dunfermline: Consisting of I. The Gospel Sonnets, or Spiritual Songs; II. A Paraphrase, or Explicatory Poem, Upon the Song of Solomon; III. Scripture Songs, Upon Some Select Passages of the Old and New Testaments; IV. Miscellaneous Poems, on Different Subjects
Whereas the Synod of Fife had, by their act at Cupar, 28th of September, 1710! Enjoined all the ministers in their bounds to observe the form of sound words and the General Assembly in the year 1720, in their fifth act anent the Marrow of Mo dern Divinity, did strictly prohibit and discharge all the ministers in this church, either by preaching, writing, or printing, to recommend the said book, or in dis course to say anything in favour of it but, on the contrary, did thereby enjoin and require them to exhort and warn the people in whose hand the book is, or may come, not to read or use the same. Yet, it being represented to the committee for over tures of the Synod, that some brethren within the bounds of this Synod had contra vened the same, as and and also Mr. Ralph Erskine of Dunfermline, at a late solemnity, by his advancing tenets and expressions in favour of some doctrines in the Marrow, censured in the said act. The committee, when most of the mem bers of the Synod were present, having heard the said brethern upon the particulars, Mr. Ralph Erskine answered, that he had always paid a dutiful respect to the authority of the judicatories of the church, particularly to that of the General As sembly, and in testimony hereof, had never publicly recommended the Marrow since the act of Assembly 1720, notwithstanding that his mind concerning that act is known. Neither was he resolved to vent himself publicly concerning those truths which he reckons condemned by that act, so long as that affair is in dependence, had he not been obliged thereto. By hearing that he and his brethern subscribers were reproached and misrepresented on that account, as if they had been Antimo mians, new schemers, and the like and that he had at public occasions preached some doctrines which are in terminis in the Marrow; such as, that a believer is not under the law as a covenant of works that he is neither under the commanding nor condemning power of the law as a covenant.2 Besides that, he had not meddled with any other doctrines of the Marrow, except such as are contained in the repre sentation given unto the Assembly with his subscription, which he hath never seen ground to retract.
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