Bookclub: Aaron's Rod Blossoming Week 2

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Found this quote on the bottom of 31 and continuing on 32, under his 5th point:

I pray, are civil punishments shortened or lengthened according to the parties repentance? I know church censures are so, but I had thought the end of civil punishments is not to reclaim a man’s soul by repentance, and then to be taken off, but to guard the laws of the land; to preserve justice, peace, and good order; to make others fear to do evil; to uphold the public good. The magistrate must both punish and continue punishments as long as is necessary for those ends, whether the party be penitent or not.

The distinction between the ends of the church and state has obviously been muddled in these days.
 
We just read that tonight and thought it was an excellent quote. Civil punishments really do have a different end but the state seems determined now to make men better when it cannot.
 
I thought Erastus' claim that Jesus and his disciples were excommunicated was odd. Especially his comment of "who will question it?" Gillespie says "I do!" He's touching on a lot of things that are fairly technical and I'm not sure I have the best grasp of what he is getting at. Or maybe I do and he's just beating his enemies until they are dead and then continuing to strike at their bodies :)

Oh, and we've also proofed up to and into part of Chapter 8 and the latest PDFs are up.
 
Note to users of the Kindle PDF: the chapters in the table of contents are links if that makes navigation any easier.
 
While researching the bibliography, I came across a book that contained a biography of Thomas Coleman (Gillespie's opponent) and a description of the controversy.

Interesting read; think it nicely summarizes the controversy. Thanks.
 
Proofed through chapter 9 and latest versions of both PDFs are uploaded.

I really liked the end of chapter 9. Gillespie seems to have drawn himself away from drudgery of the controversy a little and gets very eloquent and excited about Christ's kingdom. I also appreciated that he made the remark that he is far from wishing all profane persons to be put out of the churches, but only that the sacraments should be guarded, as things holy.
 
Found some more sources, cleaned up a few others, and added an index of archaic words. So far I've only done it with the first instance of the word but may go back and do others.

Also, major "under the hood" improvements to PDF navigation. The bookmarks should all be correct now which should make it especially nice for Kindle PDF users (you can use the Go To menu to jump to a chapter, indices, etc).
 
I thought the end of Chapter IX was great. I personally enjoyed his remarks on the parallels between the typical temple and the fulfillment in Christ (p. 47, left column, points 1-10).
 
Two suggestions, one minor one lot more work. 1. You might tag the name of the file with the date and revision number so folks can keep track of latest versions, and 2. you might consider linking to online editions of works in the bibliography. PRDL may locate a lot of these or not; but I know they have Appolonius.
 
Also, I note from the Coleman reference in chapter two that you are excising text in the body to footnotes but not noting what is original and what is added. I would take the more cumbersome approach, but if taking this approach be sure to write down in general what you are doing so you can advise the reader in a preface of the kinds of changes you made 'silently,' as they say, to the text. :2cents:
 
Thanks Chris, I'm uploading the same filename so the links shouldn't change (i.e., one can click it and get the latest version). The timestamp is on the copyright page so you can tell when this version was put up.

I have been adding URLs (mostly for Google Book links) to my bibliography, I just have it turned off right now. If I can figure out how to turn it on just at the bibliography at the end and not in the footnotes then I'll do that.

And yes, I do plan on a writeup on my methodology, which essentially is to produce what Gillespie would have produced, had he access to modern citation standards and typographical conventions.
 
I thought the end of Chapter IX was great. I personally enjoyed his remarks on the parallels between the typical temple and the fulfillment in Christ (p. 47, left column, points 1-10).

That part is very refreshing. It is almost as if he could sense his readers would grown weary of chewing on the dry bones of rabbinic teaching, and decided they needed to sink their teeth into the juicy meat of the Word.
 
I think I've added in your suggestions Chris. I have an editor's introduction and will add things as I think of it. I'm shooting for less of a critical work and more of a reader's. I've also turned on the URLs in the bibliography for those references I found. Some I forgot to add, some are readily available (e.g., confessions), and some I didn't find a work online for, only catalogues of books.
 
Added quite a few more URLs, as many as I could readily find to works online. Also fixed the links to the three prefatory sections, and finished proofing this week's reading. Everything up through chapter 11 is done with proofing except for the chapter summaries in the table of contents, so if you spot a mistake, I missed it and would appreciate hearing about it :)

I thought Erastus' arguments in chapter 11 to be a bit out there. Seems odd that they would take root but obviously they did. I also apologize for not really coming up with any good discussion questions. If anyone wants to ask a thought-provoking question, by all means do so.
 
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