I have 2 payment methods enabled, Eway (in test mode) and Offline Payment. Using a test member whose subscription expired on 1st August, I tried to renew 3 times using a dummy CC number and the transaction got the failure message. I finally used the Offline Payment method and the payment went through. That's 4 times in total.
I then went to the 'Pending' queue and saw the same member as
4 transactions. I selected all and published them but to my surprise, it created 4 occurrences of that member in the Active Subscribers list.
I think you will be able to duplicate this.