Why I'm paraphrasing
"The Practice of the Presence of God"

The English sentence structure of this book is incredibly awkward, particularly in the Conversations portion of the book. Since the M. Beaufort apparently wanted to emphasize that he is quoting Brother Lawrence, the vast majority of sentences in the Conversations begin with the word "that", as in "Brother Lawrence said that ...", but without any explicit reference to Brother Lawrence. The result is paragraph after paragraph of dependent clauses. I have rephrased the passages using independent clauses, putting the words directly into Brother Lawrence's mouth. On occassion I have also updated the English. If you wish, you can compare an original passage with my paraphrased version.
Navigational bar for indices

Back