Where to read Poole & others online

[danmpem]

Reading about people like Matthew Poole on these threads has sold me, and I want to start reading him, but I can't seem to find him online. I know that one can get his NT commentary on Free Bible Software, but is there a site where I can read his other commentaries and books?

I just read in Marsden's biography on Jonathan Edwards that he consulted the Poole, Henry, Moses Lowman, and Philip Doddridge commentaries regularly, so I am trying to find Lowman and Doddridge too. Anyone know where I can read them online?

(I really should start a master list of all online commentaries available )

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Regarding Matthew Poole, you can get his entire Annotations on the Bible on the Encyclopedia Puritannica Project cd. There is blog called The Puritannical/A Puritan at Heart which is gradually making his entire Annotations available online for free. So far they have published his Annotations on select books of the Bible, such as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Ruth and 1 Cor. 1 & 3.

You can also read select chapters from Poole's Synopsis (different from his Annotations) online at the link in my sig. I have provided links to some works by Poole in the thread below and in the links manager. We are also planning to publish all of Poole's works over time, dv.

http://www.puritanboard.com/f18/matthew-poole-9448/

Moses Lowman's commentary on Revelation is available online here.

Philip Doddridge's Family Expositor is available online here in various editions.

Also see this thread:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f17/online-reformed-puritan-commentaries-27465/

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

As an aside, both Matthew Henry's commentary and Matthew Poole's Annotations on the Bible were completed by others after they died. I have listed their continuators (with some biographical sketches) in this thread for reference purposes.

http://www.puritanboard.com/f29/closers-23514/

 

[Semper Fidelis]

That Matthew Poole project will be a real treasure when it's completed Andrew. I do hope it is completed within a man's lifetime.

I'm thinking I should just starting eating more raw eggs so I can achieve the insights and devotion of Poole.

It is remarkable, given how other Puritans were affected by his commentary, that his unabridged commentary does not exist in English yet.

 

[danmpem]

So when Spurgeon recommended it in his Commenting on Commentaries, which one was he referring to? The Latin Annotations? (That is, if that was the language Poole wrote them in)

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

So when Spurgeon recommended it in his Commenting on Commentaries, which one was he referring to? The Latin Annotations? (That is, if that was the language Poole wrote them in)

Spurgeon commends both Poole's Latin Synopsis and his English Annotations:

If you are well enough versed in Latin, you will find in POOLE'S SYNOPSIS,[4] a marvellous collection of all the wisdom and folly of the critics. It is a large cyclopaedia worthy of the days when theologians could be cyclopean, and had not shrunk from folios to octavos. Query—a query for which I will not demand an answer—has one of you ever beaten the dust from the venerable copy of Poole which loads our library shelves? Yet as Poole spent no less than ten years in compiling it, it should be worthy of your frequent notice—ten years, let me add, spent in Amsterdam in exile for the truth's sake from his native land.

His work was based upon an earlier compilation entitled Critici Sacri, containing the concentrated light of a constellation of learned men who have never been excelled in any age or country.

MATTHEW POOLE also wrote ANNOTATIONS[5] upon the Word of God, in English, which are mentioned by Matthew Henry as having passed through many impressions in his day, and he not only highly praises them, but declares that he has in his own work all along been brief upon that which Mr. Poole has more largely discussed, and has industriously declined what is to be found there. The three volumes, tolerably cheap, and easily to be got at, are necessaries for your libraries. On the whole, if I must have only one commentary, and had read Matthew Henry as I have, I do not know but what I should choose Poole. He is a very prudent and judicious commentator; and one of the few who could honestly say, "We have not willingly balked any obvious difficulty, and have designed a just satisfaction to all our readers; and if any knot remains yet untied, we have told our readers what hath been most probably said for their satisfaction in the untying of it." Poole is not so pithy and witty by far as Matthew Henry, but he is perhaps more accurate, less a commentator, and more an expositor. You meet with no ostentation of learning in Matthew Poole, and that for the simple reason that he was so profoundly learned as to be able to give results without a display of his intellectual crockery. A pedant who is for ever quoting Ambrose and Jerome, Piscator and Œcolampadius, in order to show what a copious reader he has been, is usually a dealer in small wares, and quotes only what others have quoted before him, but he who can give you the result and outcome of very extensive reading without sounding a trumpet before him is the really learned man. Mind you do not confound the Annotations with the Synopsis; the English work is not a translation of the Latin one, but an entirely distinct performance. Strange to say, like the other great Matthew he did not live to complete his work beyond Isaiah 58; other hands united to finish the design.