“II. With respect to your doctrines concerning the Trinity. Have you spoken these words, or anything to the same effect, ‘Praying to God the Father is not a whit better than praying to a wooden or stone God? The preachers of God the Father are Satan’s professors? The Father and the Holy Ghost minister to Christ in all things? The Holy Ghost is the wife of God, the mother of Christ, and of the church?’
“III. With regard to the Son of God. Do you affirm, that He sometimes gave answers to people that are not fit to be examined according to logic; and, that He had nothing extraordinary in His turn of mind or gifts?
“IV. With regard to the apostles and Scriptures. Do you affirm, that the apostles, except St. Paul and John, did not know so much of the blood theology as the Brethren? Were these your words, ‘I have ever, and still do protest, that the first Christians cannot properly be called a church, being no more than a troop of legalists’? Did you affirm, that there are more than six hundred blunders in the four gospels? Have you left out the whole epistle of St. James in your edition of the New Testament? Are there any persons among you who boast that they never read the Bible in their lives? Have you used it as a term of reproach, to have ‘heads full of Biblish lumber’? Did any of the Brethren say, ‘The Bible is dung, fit only to be spit upon’?
“V. With regard to the moral law of God. Are these your own words, ‘There is but one duty, which is that of believing’? ‘Our method is to preach no commandment but that of believing’? Is it true that, at some of the merry meetings of the Brethren, there was an uproar as if a madhouse had broken loose? that the Brethren threw one another on the floor, and struggled, with many gross indecencies? Is it true, that your son vindicated all this? And that you yourself said, it was blasphemy to censure it?
“VI. With regard to idolatry and superstition. Have you not hymns directed to angels, and the Virgin Mary? Has not a large image of our Saviour been placed in the midst of the Brethren met together? Has not incense been burnt for you?
“VII. With regard to your manner of conversation. Are not you of a close, dark, reserved temper and behaviour? Is not the spirit of secrecy the spirit of your community? Do not you, in many cases, use cunning, guile, dissimulation? Was not Mr. Gambold guilty of a calm, deliberate lie, in publicly affirming, you had not so much as seen those hymns, some of which you had not only seen but composed?
“VIII. With regard to moral honesty. Have you not distressed, if not totally ruined, numerous families?
“IX. With regard to your manner of answering for yourselves. Have you ordered the Brethren to give no answer to any accusation, but the general one, ‘It’s all a lie’? Do you still deem those who blame your hymns worthy of having their tongues plucked out, or their hands chopped off?”
The above are fair specimens of all the Queries proposed by the writer of this curious pamphlet.[244] The conclusion is as follows.
“But I have done. I have proposed the Queries which you desired, and have endeavoured therein to come to the point. Permit me now to remind your lordship of the assurance given to the public, ‘As soon as these Queries are finished, the Moravians, who expect them with earnest longing, will lose no time in answering them.’ If your lordship is inwardly and deeply convinced, that the bulk of the preceding objections are just, and if you are determined to amend whatsoever is capable of amendment, then silence may be a sufficient answer. I am, my lord, your lordship’s real well wisher, and humble servant.”