The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643-1652 - Tapa dura

I am in no small danger of running short of superlatives. To put it simply, this is a sublime scholarly achievement. (Journal of Ecclesiastical History)

There are simply too many outstanding features to highlight ... Those studying the political, theological, and ecclesiastical climate of he 1640s in Britain cannot now do so without recourse to these volumes. (Church History and Religious Culture)

We can be grateful that Byfield's hand has finally been mastered by Chad Van Dixhoorn, who has completed the Herculean task of producing a definitive critical edition ... these five volumes constitute a remarkable accomplishment ... a vital resource for students of the post-Reformation era and the Reformed tradition. (The English Historical Review)

This is a monumental academic and theological contribution. These volumes will probably form the basis for scholarship that seeks to interact with the Westminster Assembly for the remainder of this century, at least. (Modern Reformation)

The publication of these volumes in September 2012 marked the conclusion of nearly 12 years work and is an astonishing achievement ... These volumes demonstrate an extraordinary attention to detail. (The Reformed Theological Review)

It is extremely difficult to do justice to this edition in a review like this. These Minutes are a critical record of a decade of theological controversy ... an astounding achievement a judgment which will be echoed by all students of the northern Renaissance. (Crawford Gribben)

This set will now be utterly indispensable: every research library should buy it. It will be used into the next century and beyond. (Alec Ryrie,Church Times)

For more than ten years the Westminster assembly was one of the major institutions of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Members of the assembly were involved in every significant political debate of the decade, and the public blamed or blessed the think-tank for radical changes in the church. At home and abroad, people perceived the assembly to be a powerful patron. Christians wrote from Europe to ask the assembly for advice. Visitors made their way to the abbey, from an unknown Muslim to the elector palatine of the Rhine. Printers and booksellers INSERT: Included in Starkmann 40% promotion, September-October 2014 theologians and members were paraded down London streets and feasted at banquets.

The story of the Westminster assembly's accomplishments, as well as its failures, are told in the texts of this edition. The gathering left behind an extraordinary testimony of its reforming activities, and the manuscript minutes constitute one of the most important unpublished religious texts of seventeenth-century Britain. All surviving votes and debates of the assembly are provided here for the first time. This edition documents almost 2,000 examinations of preachers for churches, fellows for colleges, and heretics for heresy. It also includes all known assembly papers, many of them only recently discovered. These texts reveal much of the assembly's work behind the scenes, and explain how the gathering could at once serve as an icon of godly rule, producing classic texts in the history of Christian doctrine and practice, while simultaneously becoming entangled in prolonged debates and the 'democratic anarchy' which characterized the British Revolution.