That poison souls. Such are heterodox ministers, who poison people with error. The basilisk poisons herbs and flowers by breathing on them; so the breath of heretical ministers poisons souls. The Socinian, who would rob Christ of his Godhead; the Arminian, who by advancing the power of the will, would take off the crown from the head of free-grace; the Antinomian, who denies the use of the moral law to a believer, as if it were antiquated and out of date--poison men's souls. Error is as damnable as vice.The Ten Commandments, 143-144
If I have learned anything in 35 or 40 years of teaching, it is that students don't learn everything I teach them. What they learn is what I am excited about, the kinds of things I emphasize again and again and again and again. That had better be the gospel.
we find Paul to be asserting four things about the false teachers: (1) they put a great deal of stock in ascetic practices, perhaps to induce visions; (2) they are so concerned with calling on angels as a means of protection from evil forces that they are virtually worshiping them; (3) they focus on visions they have experienced, perhaps citing the content of those visions in their teaching; and (4) they display, perhaps because of their boasting about visions, an arrogance that reveals a worldly orientation.The letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (p. 229). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
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.
If there is a religion in the world which exalts the office of teaching, it is safe to say that it is the religion of Jesus Christ.The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
We have somehow got hold of the idea that error is only that which is outrageously wrong; and we do not seem to understand that the most dangerous person of all is the one who does not emphasize the right things.Sermon on the Mount (2:244)
The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere.Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (7)