"Aaron's Rod Blossoming is George Gillespie's magnum opus, and it accomplishes three ends. First, Aaron's Rod argues from the Old and New Testaments that Christ's church has a government distinct from the government of the state. Second, the book demonstrates that Christ intends a particular government for the church. Elsewhere Gillespie defends a presbyterian form of church government. Here he proves, against Erastians of all sorts, that the church must establish a form of church government according to the rules of God's Word. Third, Aaron's Rod demonstrates that the church must engage in church discipline and must protect itself by fencing the Lord's Table. This volume represents an accessible but scholarly reproduction of a classic presbyterian work. Read it, and you will be reminded why seventeenth-century books on ecclesiology remain the go-to resources for pastors and theologians seeking to understand the basic building blocks of biblical church government."
--Chad Van Dixhoorn, professor of church history and theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina
"[George Gillespie] distinguished himself as a defender of the Reformed ideal of the church in conflict with the leading Erastians, Selden and Coleman. He excelled as a ready debater. It was during the years that this assembly sat that the youthful divine produced his masterpiece in defense of the freedom of the church to carry out the will of its Head and Lord. This learned treatise goes by a name that bears the hallmark of the age. It is Aaron's Rod Blossoming. In it we have an exhaustive discussion of the questions at issue between the Erastians and the Orthodox. It is the recognized classic of Scottish Reformed theology in its own department."
--John MacLeod, Scottish Theology
"In this remarkably able and elaborate production, Gillespie took up the Erastian controversy as stated and defended by its ablest advocates, fairly encountering their strongest arguments and assailing their most formidable positions in the frank and fearless manner of a man thoroughly sincere and thoroughly convinced of the truth and goodness of his cause."
--William M. Hetherington, History of the Westminster Assembly
