On a sinner's being made right with a holy God, Richard Hooker's Learned Discourse on Justification is classic and timeless.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hooker/just.titlepage.html
On Paul's attitude toward Jesus particularly and the fundamental difference between historic Christianity and modern liberalism Machen is amazing.
http://www.biblebelievers.com/machen/
In particular this,
“The apostle Paul clearly stood always toward Jesus in a truly religious relationship. Jesus was not for Paul merely an example for faith; He was primarily the object of faith The religion of Paul did not consist in having faith in God like the faith which Jesus had in God; it consisted rather in having faith in Jesus. An appeal to the example of Jesus is not indeed absent from the Pauline Epistles, and certainly it was not absent from Paul's life. The example of Jesus was found by Paul, moreover, not merely in the acts of incarnation and atonement but even in the daily life of Jesus in Palestine. Exaggeration with regard to this matter should be avoided. Plainly Paul knew far more about the life of Jesus than in the Epistles he has seen fit to tell; plainly the Epistles do not begin to contain all the instruction which Paul had given to the Churches at the commencement of their Christian life. But even after exaggerations have been avoided, the fact is significant enough. The plain fact is that imitation of Jesus, important though it was for Paul, was swallowed up by something far more important still. Not the example of Jesus, but the redeeming work of Jesus, was the primary thing for Paul. The religion of Paul was not primarily faith in God like Jesus' faith; it was faith in Jesus; Paul committed to Jesus without reserve the eternal destinies of his soul. That is what we mean when we say that Paul stood in a truly religious relation to Jesus.” Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen.
And on Anglicanism's avoidance of "patternism" in its understanding of Biblical authority see esp. the preface to Hooker's great work,
http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/CHRISTIA/library/polity-preface.html
In the preface to his classic work, On the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, he states this
[4.] But your reformation which are of the clergy (if yet it displease you not that I should say ye are of the clergy) seemeth to aim at a broader mark. Ye think that he which will perfectly reform must bring the form of church-discipline unto the state which then it was at. A thing neither possible, nor certain, nor absolutely convenient. Concerning the first, what was used in the Apostles' times the Scripture fully declareth not; so that making their times the rule and canon of church-polity, ye make a rule which being not possible to be fully known, is as impossible to be kept. Again, since the latter even of the Apostles' own times had that which in the former was not thought upon, in this general proposing of the Apostolical times, there is no certainty which should be followed: especially seeing that ye give us great cause to doubt how far ye allow those times. For although "the loover [chimney] of antichristian building were not," ye say, as then "set up, yet the foundations thereof were secretly and under the ground laid in the Apostles' times:" so that all other times ye plainly reject, and the Apostles' own times ye approve with marvellous great suspicion, leaving it intricate and doubtful, wherein we are to keep ourselves unto the pattern of their times. Thirdly, whereas it is the error of the common multitude to consider only what hath been of old, and if the same were well, to see whether still it continue; if not, to condemn that presently which is, and never to search upon what ground or consideration the change might grow: such rudeness cannot be in you so well borne with, whom learning and judgment hath enabled much more soundly to discern how far the times of the Church and the orders thereof may alter without offence. True it is, the ancienter, the better ceremonies of religion are [Minutius Felix]; however, not absolutely true and without exception; but true only so far forth as those different ages do agree in the state of those things, for which at the first those rites, orders, and ceremonies, were instituted. In the Apostles' times that was harmless, which being now revived would be scandalous; as their oscula sancta [holy kisses]. [Rom 16:16; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26; 1 Pet 5:14] Those feasts of charity, [1 Cor 11:17] which being instituted by the Apostles, were retained in the Church long after, are not now thought any where needful. What man is there of understanding, unto whom it is not manifest how the way of providing for the clergy by tithes, the device of almshouses for the poor, the sorting out of the people into their several parishes, together with sundry other things which the Apostles' times could not have, (being now established,) are much more convenient and fit for the Church of Christ, than if the same should be taken away for conformity's sake with the ancientest and first times? [5.] The orders therefore, which were observed in the Apostles' times, are not to be urged as a rule universally either sufficient or necessary.
A modern writer, Aubrey Malphurs of Dallas Theological Seminary, also addresses the question with keen insight. He puts it this way:
Values are constant, change-resistant things. They should not change appreciably over the life of a ministry. The forms the values take, however, are not constant, nor should they be. Scripture determines core values but does not dictate the forms those values take. There are no biblical forms that Christians must follow. Some argue that believers must not only do what the Bible says, but they must do it the way the church did it in the first century. If this were true, it would lock the church into a first-century culture. This is the mistake that the Amish have made, except they have locked themselves into the culture of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, not that of the first century. Either way, the church becomes culturally irrelevant; it fails to address the issues of its culture and has very little impact." (Values- Driven Leadership: Discovering and Developing Your Core Values for Ministry by Aubrey Malphurs, Baker Books, 1996, pp. 86-87.)