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This doctrine is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. What Luther Says: An Anthology Vol 2 (704)
Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown. John Calvin: Selections from His Writings (95)
Justification takes place by works and by faith—by the works of Christ and by our faith.
If hatred of sin is necessary to God, then penal justice is equally necessary because the hatred of sin is the constant will of punishing it.
Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.Systematic Theology, 513
When the apostle says that 'faith is by hearing' (Rom. 10:17), he does indeed give us to understand that the ministry of the church ought to come in as the ordinary means of producing faith in adults. He does not teach, however, that the church is clearer and better known than the Scriptures.
Good works are required as the means and way for possessing salvation. Even though they don't contribute anything to the acquisition of our salvation, they are necessary to the obtainment of it. No one can be saved without them.
We do not deny that the church has many functions in relation to the Scriptures. She is: (1) the keeper of the oracles of God to whom they are committed and who preserves the authentic tables of the covenant of grace with the greatest fidelity, like a notary (Rom. 3:2); (2) the guide, to point out the Scriptures and lead us to them (Is. 30:21); (3) the defender, to vindicate and defend them by separating the genuine books from the spurious, in which sense she may be called the ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15*); (4) the herald who sets forth and promulgates them (2 Cor. 5:19; Rom. 10:16); (5) the interpreter inquiring into the unfolding of the true sense. But all these imply a ministerial only and not a magisterial power.
The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures is enjoined upon men of all languages, therefore the translation of it into the native tongues is necessary. Since men speak different languages and are not all familiar with those two in which it was first written, it cannot be understood by them unless translated; it comes as the same thing to say nothing at all and to say what nobody can understand. But here it happens by the wonderful grace of God that the division of tongues (which formerly was the sign of a curse) becomes now the proof of a heavenly blessing. What was introduced to destroy Babel is now used to build up the mystical Zion.
It was not necessary for the apostles to write a catechism so as to deliver their doctrines professedly. It was enough for them to hand down to us those doctrines in accordance with which all symbolical books and catechisms might be constructed. If they did not formally write a catechism, they did materially leave us either in the gospels or in the epistles those things by which we can be clearly taught the principles of religion (katécheisthai).
If theology takes some things from other systems, it is not as an inferior from superiors, but as an superior from inferiors (as a mistress freely using her handmaids). Theology does not so much take from others, as presupposes certain previously known things upon which it builds revelation.
Institutes of Elenctic Theology
That God is the object of theology is evident both from the very name (theologias and theosebeias), and from Scripture which recognizes no other principal object.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
Thus that all things are discussed in theology either because they deal with God himself or have a relation (schesin) to him as the first principle and ultimate end.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
the Article of justification is the Master and the prince, the lord, the ruler, and judge, over all the kinds of doctrine, which preserves and governs the entire church doctrine and sets up our conscience in the sight of God.
But the divine dayspring from on high is adored, Christ the Lord, who is our sun and shield; the sun of every blessing, asserting the glory of religion; the shield of the most safe protection, affording an invincible and inexpugnable guard to liberty.
Let us remember that our justification means not only that our sins are forgiven and that we have been declared to be righteous by God Himself, not merely that we were righteous at that moment when we believed, but permanently righteous.Spiritual Depression (74)
It is its conviction that there is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only 'when we believe.' It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always on His blood and righteousness alone that we can rest.Miserable-Sinner Christianity in the Hands of the Rationalists, chapter III in Perfectionism, Part One, vol. 7 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield (New York: Oxford University Press, repr., 2000), 113-114
Although the church is more ancient than the Scriptures formally considered (and as to the mode of writing), yet it cannot be called such with respect to the Scriptures materially considered (and as to the substance of the doctrine) because the Word of God is more ancient than the church itself, being its foundation and seed.
The 'seat of Moses' (Mt. 23:2) is not the succession in the place and office of Moses or the external court of a supreme judge to whom the authority in question belongs (for the seat of Moses was not in existence nor was any such privilege attached to it); rather it is the promulgation of the true doctrine delivered by Moses (as the ordinary gloss on Dt. 17 has it, 'The seat of Moses is wherever his doctrine is'), and the chair of Peter is wherever his doctrine is heard. So those who have been teachers of the law delivered by Moses are considered to have taught in Moses' seat, as Hilary observes (Commentarius in Matthaeum 24.1 [PL 9.1048]). Therefore the Pharisees teaching in Moses' seat were to be heard as far as they faithfully proposed to the people his doctrine, without any admixture of their own.
The knowledge of a thing may be confused or distinct. The church can be known before the Scriptures by a confused knowledge, but a distinct knowledge of the Scriptures ought to precede because the truth of the church can be ascertained only from the Scriptures. The church can be apprehended by us before the Scriptures by a human faith, as an assembly of men using the same sacred things; yet it can be known and believed as an assembly of believers and the communion of saints by a divine faith, only after the marks of the church which Scripture supplies have become known.
To inquire concerning the number, the authors, parts and single words of the sacred books is different from inquiring concerning the fundamental doctrines contained in them. The latter knowledge pertains to every believer, but not the former. Nor will his salvation be in jeopardy who cannot tell who wrote the gospel of Matthew, provided he believes the book to be authentic and divine. The knowledge of the primary author of any book is one thing; that of the amanuensis is another. The latter belongs only to an historical faith, but the former to a divine.
Christ did not suffer eternal death but a death of three days only, and yet he fully paid the debt of everlasting punishment which we owed. His, which was one of finite duration, was equivalent to an everlasting death suffered by us, because of the infinite dignity of his person. His were the sufferings not of a mere man, but of the true God, who purchased the Church with his blood, (Acts 20:28). Hence what was deficient in duration is supplied by the divinity of the sufferer, which gave infinite importance to a temporary passion.
Though a death of infinite value was due for every individual sinner, yet such a death as Christ's is quite sufficient for the redemption of the whole elect world.
For though Christ's human nature, which was the instrument in the obedience and sufferings, was finite, yet this does not lessen the value of the satisfaction, because it derives its perfection from the divine person of Christ, to which all his actions must be attributed; as he is the person who obeyed and suffered.
The Apocryphal books are so called not because the authors are unknown (for there are some canonical books whose authors are unknown and some apocryphal books whose authors are known); not because they could be read only in private and not in public (for some of them may be read even in public), but either because they were removed from the crypt (apo tés kryptés) (that sacred place in which the holy writings were laid up) as Epiphanius and Augustine think; or because their authority was hidden and suspected, and consequently their use also was secret since the church did not apply to them to confirm the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines (as Jerome says, 'Praefatio in libros Salomonis' from "Hieronymi Prologus Galeatus" in Biblia Sacra Vulgata Editionis Sixti V ... et Celementis VIII [1865], p. lii); or, what is more probable, because they are of an uncertain and obscure origin (as Augustine says, CG 15.23* [FC 14:474]).
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