The nature and life of the church is among the most pressing issues facing Christians today. Questions of ministry and liturgy, authority and freedom appear in a wide variety of guises across the world-wide church, and relativism and uncertainty are as common inside it as outside.

Many Christians wonder whether there is any way forward. Iain H. Murray's anthology answers by putting the primary documents in the reader's hands - drawn largely but not only from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - so that the arguments can be weighed where they were first made. A reference volume for elders and students of church polity.