C.H.S:"Comm & Commmentary's"

[Learner]

I'm going to post some of his witty and sometimes cutting remarks.He had a lot of praise for many,but I'll just present the negative reviews,sometimes without mention of the respective authors.They'll just be snippets.

"much ado about nothing"

"We greatly grudge the four shillings which we gave for it."

"he sows skeptiicisms"

"A pile of paper,valuable to housemaids for lighting fires."

"More eloquent than accurate."

"Sermons as good as these are plentiful as blackberries.Why were they printed?"

"Tainted with infidelity."

"Paper spoiled."

"Likely to send the servants to sleep."

"A queer old book."

"In all his commentaries he lumbers alone in his six-wheeled wagon."

"One of the dreariest works ever written...It is as dry as Noah in the ark."

"its rarity is no great calamity."

"There is much rubbish."

"the spiritual element is absent."

"devoid of the evangelical spirit."

"We cannot read Keil with pleasure,for we want spiritual meat."

"Words and only words."

"Mere fragments in a style we do not admire,which seems to be peculiar to certain brethren.Only the inflated can understand what such writers mean."

"We see no use whatever in this production."

"Too mystical for ordinary minds.If the author would write in plain English his readers would probably discover that there is nothing very valuable in his remarks."

"Very poor and prosy.We pity the hearer who sat out these 60 lectures."

"about as dry as Gideon's unwetted fleece."

"...frequently absurd.The author confounds rather than expounds."

"A small affair in all ways."

"his exposition can be dispensed with."

"The author was Wake,but not awake,or he would never have wasted so much good paper."

"The style is scholastic and poitless."

"Dry and tedious:in the stiff antique style."

"We need no longer wonder how spiders make such long threads with such little material,for here is an equally amazing instance of spinning."

"Tame sermons.Faultlessly feeble..Good,but no good."

"Let it alone."

"...it reads rather wearily to us."

"...his theological views render him a very poverty-stricken commentator."

"Mr.Dale says he is a man of one book,and we are glad to hear it:for we should be sorry for another book to suffer at his hands."

"Confused,eccentric,and happily very rare."

"Notes neither long,numerous,nor valuable."

"The fruit is ripe,but lacks flavor."

"This meandering author...rhymes no end of rubbish...There is no end to the foolishness of expositers."

"Expounding on this needs an acrobatic imagination."


~Edited for size

[Edited on 6-21-2004 by Scott Bushey]

 

[alwaysreforming]

I just finished reading "Commenting and Commentaries" the other day, and I thought it was excellent!

Spurgeon ROCKS!!!

(And I also just finished Dallimore's biography of him. I commend it to anyone's reading.):book:

 

[Learner]

C.H.S:"Commenting&Commmentaries"

Continued:

"this groveling theory"

"Useless."

"Blind!"

"just a little dull."

"Theologically his standing is very dubious."

"He says he wrote for his children,and certainly he is childish enough."

"MacCulloch both toils and spins."

" Incomprehensible.It may as well die."

"His work is rather a curiousity than a treasure."

"In his own day some considered him a sage and others a quack.He was a little of both."

"It is worse than useless."

"More of rolling sound than anything else."

"He is by no means a favorite author with us."

"Roos,however,is dull to a dreadful degree...we cannot keep awake while reading him."

"Of no importance."

"Plenty of paper."

"What intelligent man in this kingdom could learn anything from these lectures?"

"We ought to be enraptured with a commentary from such a divine,but we confess that we are not."

"He is too grammatical and dry to be generally interesting."

"[Who]could refrain from sleeping while trying to read [these volumes]...no possible use to a sensible man, except as an opiate."

"A queer collection."

"...absolutely nothing in them."

"Dr. Whedon lacks common sense,and is no expositer.He is furiously anti-calvinistic,and as weak as he is furious."

"we are not enamored of him."

"Milk for babies watered beyond measure."

"To most men these volumes will simply be a heap of lumber."

"His work is utterly worthless."

"we can never bring our soul to like him,he always seems so graceless."

"We do not see what a man can get out of it.But,hush!it is by an archbishop!"

"Mediocre discourses much appreciated by the clergy who borrow their sermons."

"...70 pages of rubbish."

"Platitudes sleepily worded."

"Solid,sound,soporific sermons...They will not make the hearers lie awake at nights,or cause them palpitations of heart through excess of original and striking thought."

"Dr.Parker is an able though somewhat --.But stop,he is a near neighbor of ours."

"The notes do not charm us."

"The spirit of the book is vicious."

"Dr.Bennett fights very earnestly for the Congregationalist view of baptism,for which we do not blame him;for common humanity leads us to admire a man who struggles for a weak cause."

"This pile of printed paper may safely be left on the bookseller's shelves."

"It is easy to divide an egg by letting it drop on the floor,and in this fashion this author divides texts."

"We do not admire this author."

"We judge it to be poor as poverty itself."

"The work will greatly edify those whom it does not confuse."

"Anti-Calvinistic.Why do not such writers let Romans alone?"

"...his mediocrity is respectable."

"This epistle has a fascination for Arminian writers.It affords them an opportunity for showing their courage and ingenuity."

"We do not call these lectures expounding,but confounding."

"Truth compels us to confess that we find it dull."

"Useful in showing the preacher how not to do it."

"Rather mystified with expressions peculiar to 'dispensational truth.'Whatever that may mean..."

"Sermons which do not rise above mediocrity."