Query 17: Live Blog

In this blog conversation, you can make comments, ask questions, and help others' connect to text. I've posted some questions below to get us started, though you don't need to feel tied to these questions alone.
In order to get discussion credit today, you need to post at least twice.

•What’s Jefferson’s thesis?
–Outline his top five points, from your POV.
•What elements of “Query 17” demonstrate rationalist thinking?
•Having Jefferson’s background, what most resonated with us about his beliefs?
•What are his major concerns?
•How do these concerns reflective of our country’s history as well as our country’s foundations, in which Jefferson was influential?
•How are his ideas useful to us today?
•Which of his ideas resonates with you? Why?
•With which ideas do you disagree? Why?

Puritan Prudence

Read over these Puritan quotes from Anne Bradstreet, a Puritan poet who was allowed to write only because her father was a minister. Pick one that peaks your interest. Then, on our CLASS BLOG, write a response incorporating your ideas, your connections to what we’ve read so far, facts from yesterday’s discussions, etc DECIDING if you think Puritans have Prudence.

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

If what I do prove well, it won't advance. They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance. If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases.

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are.

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.

There is no object that we see; no action that we do; no good that we enjoy; no evil that we feel, or fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage of all: and he that makes such improvement is wise, as well as pious.

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.