A09376:1520
A cloud of faithful witnesses, leading to the heavenly Canaan, or, A commentary upon…A cloud of faithfull witnesses, leading to the heauenly Canaan, or, A commentarie vpon…
A cloud of faithful witnesses, leading to the heavenly Canaan, or, A commentary upon the 11 chapter to the Hebrews preached in Cambridge by that godly, and judicious divine, M. William Perkins ; long expected and desired, and therefore published at the request of his executors, by Will. Crashawe and Tho. Pierson, preachers of Gods Word, who heard him preach it, and wrote it from his mouth.A cloud of faithfull witnesses, leading to the heauenly Canaan, or, A commentarie vpon the 11 chapter to the Hebrewes preached in Cambridge by that godly, and iudicious divine, M. William Perkins ; long expected and desired, and therefore published at the request of his executours, by Will. Crashawe and Tho. Pierson, preachers of Gods Word, who heard him preach it, and wrote it from his mouth.
London: printed by Humphrey Lownes for Leo. Greene, 1607London: printed by Humfrey Lownes for Leo. Greene, 1607
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
For the person: Rahab was a woman of Canaan, dwelling in Jericho; as we may read Joshua 2: there she lived and had her abode: she was no Israelite, but a foreigner in regard of her birth, and a Stranger from GODs Church. How then comes it to pass, that she is commended for her faith, and here put into the Catalogue of these renowned believers? Why are not the rest of the Canaanites preferred to this honour as well as she? Answer. We must know this, that from the beginning of the world to the time of Christs ascension, the Church of God was small; sometime shut up in some few families, as, from the flood, to the giving of the Law; and after limited to a small Kingdom and people in the Land of Canaan, where the Lords people dwelt. During which time, all other Nations and people of the world, besides this little company, were no people of God, but strangers from the covenant of promise, and (as Pau• saith) Without God in the world. And howsoever Gods Church was thus shut up,1 as it were in a corner; yet now and then it pleased God to reach out his merciful hand to some of the heathen, calling them into his Church, and receiving them into his covenant: and they are called in the new testament, Proselytes. In Abraham's family,2 his bond-men and servants were circumcised, and made members of the Church of GOD. And in Moses days Jethro Moses father in Law,3 a Priest of Midian, obtained this at Gods hands, to be joined unto Gods Church: and so was Ruth the Moabite, Ruth 1.16: and Naaman the Assyrian, 2. Kings 5.17: and as some think Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 4.3, but that is not so certain. And so was the Eunuch of Ethiopia, Candaces the Queen ⟨p. 474⟩of Ethiopia's chief governor, Acts 8.27. Now, as God in mercy dealt with these, so did he in like mercy call Rahab the harlot above all the people of Jericho; for, they trusted to their strong walls, and therefore died; but Rahab believed, that the God of Israel was the true God, and so had mercy showed unto her. Now, after the time of Christs ascension, God dealt more bountifully with the world: for he sent the light of his Gospel into all Nations; and (as the Scripture saith) their sound went through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world,