A09383:14
A commentary or exposition, upon the five first chapters of the Epistle to the…A commentarie or exposition, vpon the fiue first chapters of the Epistle to the…
A commentary or exposition, upon the five first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians: penned by the godly, learned, and judicial divine, Mr. W. Perkins. Now published for the benefit of the Church, and continued with a supplement upon the sixth chapter, by Rafe Cudworth Bachelor of DivinityA commentarie or exposition, vpon the fiue first chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians: penned by the godly, learned, and iudiciall diuine, Mr. W. Perkins. Now published for the benefit of the Church, and continued with a supplement vpon the sixt chapter, by Rafe Cudworth Bachelour of Diuinitie
Cambridge: printed by John Legat, 1604Cambridge: printed by Iohn Legat, 1604
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.
But because all readers are not strong men in Christ, some being but babes, who must have every thing minced, and cut small unto them before they can receive it. Neither all teachers expert, & prompt Scribes, like to Ezra, nor mighty in the Scripture as Apollos, such as are able to divide the word a right, and apply it fitly as they ought. (Some being deceitful workmen perverting it to their own destruction, in pressing the two dugs of 1the Scripture, the Old and New Testament, that in steed of 2milk, they suck nothing but blood: Others, unskilful, casting wild Coloquintida into the pot of the children of the 3prophets, being too hasty to learn, and too ignorant to know of them selves, what they should have gathered). Therefore to help the ignorance of the one, and hinder the malice of the other (and so to profit the most) beside the meaning, he hath briefly drawn out such doctrines as naturally arise from the text, showing withal, how they ought to be applied for confutation, correction, instruction, consolation. Which he hath done with such dexterity, (artificially matching together two things, heretofore insociable, Brevity, and Perspicuity) that the like (I take it) hath not been performed heretofore by any Expositor upon this Epistle: which we may well call the key of the new Testament, in that it handleth the weightiest points of doctrine, whether we consider the necessary knowledge ⟨image 5⟩thereof, or the controversies of these times. Therefore Luther after he had once publicly expounded it, toke in hand again, and interpreted it the second time, beginning (as himself saith) where he ended, according to the saying of Syracides, When a man hath done what he can, he must begin again. 4Which Commentary, seeing it hath found such good entertainment amongst us, being but a foreigner, and having lost much of his strength, and taken wind by changing from language to language, as wine from one vessel to another: I doubt not but this, being a free-denizen, will find the like favour and acceptance, the rather, if it will please your Honour to vouchsafe it your countenance: To whose protection and patronage I here commend it, as S. Luke did his Histories to the most noble Theophilus: