The contrast between the law and the gospel, therefore, is the contrast between the righteousness of the law and the righteousness of faith. Either we are saved (partly or wholly) by our obedience to the law or we are saved by Christ’s obedience for us.

CORNELIS P. VENEMA, THE GOSPEL OF FREE ACCEPTANCE IN CHRIST: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE REFORMATION AND NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL, 14.

Whatever the gap between academy and pew, ideas tend to have legs that will eventually carry them into the church.

Cornelis P. Venema, The Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ: An Assessment of the Reformation and New Perspective on Paul, 2.

Therefore, lest we suffer any such thing, we must keep the rule of faith unswervingly. And perform the commandments of God, believing in God and fearing Him, for He is Lord, and loving Him, for He is Father. Action, then, comes by faith, as ‘if you do not believe,’ Isaiah says, ‘you will not understand.’ (Isa. 7:9); and the truth brings about faith, for faith is established upon things truly real, that we may believe what really is, as it is, and believing what really is, as it is, we may always keep our conviction of it firm.

Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching, 41.

Heresy is a gross and dangerous error, voluntarily held and factiously maintained by some person or persons within the visible church, in opposition to some chief or substantial truth or truths grounded upon and drawn from the holy Scripture by necessary consequences.

George Gillespie, The Works of George Gillespie, Vol. 2, 49.

The Spirit intercedes for us not in many words or long prayers, but with groanings, with little sounds like “Abba.” Small as this word is, it says ever so much. It says: “My Father, I am in great trouble and you seem so far away. But I know I am your child, because you are my Father for Christ’s sake. I am loved by you because of the Beloved.” This one little word “Abba” surpasses the eloquence of a Demosthenes and a Cicero.

Luther’s Commentary on Galatians 4:6

Presbyterial government is not despotical, but ministerial; it is not a dominion, but a service.

George Gillespie, Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, 81.

In the Revelation of St. John (xiii. 18) we read: —

“Let him that hath understanding, count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is, Six hundred three score and six.” (Some ancient authorities read 616 instead of 666.)

Scientific commentators are probably this time agreed that the name to be “counted” must be found by “gematria,” i.e. we must look for a name the letters of which, taken separately in their ordinary values as numerals and added together, will make of the sum of 666 or 616. Now it has been generally assumed by exegetists hitherto that gematria was a specifically Jewish form of the numerical riddle, and therefore attempts have often been made, especially in recent times, to solve the number 666 or 616 by means of the Hebrew alphabet. As a matter of fact, however, the interchange of numbers for words and words for numbers was not unknown to the ancient Greeks, as even Greek lexicons tell us. The patristic writers, in so far as they attempted to solve the riddle with the Greek alphabet, show that such numerical puzzles were not entirely foreign to the Greek world. From Pompeii, however, we learn that they were current among the people at the very time the New Testament was being written. A. Sogliano has published graffiti (wall-scribblings) from Pompeii, i.e. not later in date than 79 A.D., one example of which is as follows: —

“Amerimnus thought upon his lady Harmonia for good. The number of her honourable name is 45 (or 1035).”

Another example reads: —

“I love her whose number is 545.”

These graffiti, in date not far removed from the Revelation of St. John, certainly suggest new riddles, but they also establish, besides those already pointed out, the following facts: —

(1) They are concerned with names of persons, which names for some reason or other are to be concealed.

(2) The name was concealed by resolving it into a number. In all probability single letters were given their usual values as numerals and then added together.

(3) The similar numerical riddle in the Revelation would not necessarily seem Semitic, i.e. foreign, to the men of the Greek-speaking world. Examples of such playing with numbers have been found on inscribed stones of the Imperial period at Pergamum, which was one of the cities of the Apocalypse (Rev. ii. 12 ff.). Franz Bucheler has convincingly proved how widespread the habit was at that time, and a passage in Suetonius (Nero, 39), hitherto obscured by false conjectures, has been cleared up by his brilliant discover that the name “Nero” is there resolved numerically into “matricide.”

(4) In solving the apocalyptic numbers 616 and 666, occurring in the Greek book, it is not only not unfeasible to start from the Greek alphabet, but it is in fact the most obvious thing to do.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 276-278.

The New Testament is a book, but not of your dry kind, for the texts composing it are still to-day, despite the tortures to which literary criticism has subjected them, living confessions of Christian inwardness. . . . The words in which it is written come from the souls of saints sprung from the people, and therefore the New Testament is the Bible for the many.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 251.

The Epistle to the Hebrews shows us Christianity preparing for a flight from its native levels into the higher region of culture, and we are conscious of the beginnings of a Christian world-literature.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 251.