The Faith Received Beta

The Christian tradition is
the Christian’s inheritance.

Read Christian theology from the early church to the early modern period. Search the works, compare translations with the original texts, and follow their sources, publicly available, practically usable, and beautifully readable.

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Find any work in the library by name.

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Scripture

Read any chapter of the Bible and see where the church's teachers cite each verse.

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Topics

Christian doctrine in order, from the creeds, confessions and the church's teachers.

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Search everything and keep what you find.

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Devotional

The tradition was written to be read.

The church wrote for use rather than for the archive. Treatises and commentaries, catechisms and confessions, disputations, sermons and prayers, all of it set down for people who needed to know what to believe and how to say it. Most of it has been out of reach: untranslated, out of print, or shelved in libraries you cannot walk into. It is here now. Read it a page at a time.

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19,597Works available to read

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SourcesOriginal texts and available scans

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Who The Faith Received Is For

Laity

Read creeds, catechisms, sermons and other works of Christian theology.

Pastors

Find historical commentaries and theological sources for preaching, teaching and pastoral work.

Academics

Search primary sources, compare authors and check translations against original texts and available scans.

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In the collection

The whole church

c. 2nd–4th Century

The Apostles’ Creed

The ancient baptismal confession of the Christian faith in three articles.

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The whole church

325 / 381 AD

The Nicene Creed

The definitive creed of the universal church on the Trinity and incarnation.

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Reformed

1563

The Heidelberg Catechism

129 questions and answers for the Christian life, organized into 52 Lord’s Days.

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Reformed

1647

Westminster Shorter Catechism

107 questions and answers teaching the essentials of Reformed Christian doctrine.

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The early church

c. 50–120 AD

The Didache

16 chapters of early Christian teaching on ethics, worship, and church life.

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Athanasius

c. 318 AD

On the Incarnation

Athanasius’ classic defense of the Incarnation, why the eternal Word took flesh to restore fallen humanity and conquer death.

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Augustine of Hippo

c. 397–400 AD

Confessions

Augustine’s autobiographical meditation on sin, grace, memory, and time. The first great Western autobiography.

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Thomas à Kempis

c. 1418–1427

The Imitation of Christ

The most widely read devotional work after the Bible, a guide to the interior life of prayer, humility, and union with God.

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Jonathan Edwards

1722–1723

Resolutions

70 personal resolutions for holy living, written between ages 18 and 20.

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John Calvin

1536 / 1559

Institutes of the Christian Religion

The foundational work of Reformed systematic theology, covering God, Scripture, Christ, salvation, and the Church across four books.

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Amandus Polanus

1615

Syntagma Theologiae Christianae

Polanus’s systematic account of Reformed theology. Begin with Book I, on Scripture and the foundations of theology.

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Reformed

1561

The Belgic Confession

37 articles of faith confessing the core doctrines of the Christian faith.

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Study

Study the texts and their sources.

Read an English translation alongside the original text. Where page scans are available, open them in the reader to check the source.

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The shelves

Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms

Confessional documents

The confessional record from the second century to the twentieth: the creeds and confessions themselves.

Nicaea · Chalcedon · Augsburg · Trent · Westminster

Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, volume 1, 1759

The Councils

Mansi’s collection

The acts of the councils and synods from the apostles at Jerusalem to the First Vatican Council.

Nicaea · Ephesus · Chalcedon · Lateran · Florence

Latin Fathers

Latin Christian writings

Migne’s Latin fathers and medievals, Tertullian to Innocent III.

Augustine · Jerome · Ambrose · Bernard of Clairvaux · Peter Damian

Greek Fathers

Greek Christian writings

Migne’s Greek fathers, the Apostolic Fathers to the fall of Constantinople.

John Chrysostom · Origen · Athanasius · Basil the Great · Gregory of Nazianzus

Patrologia Orientalis, volume 1, 1907

Eastern Fathers

Eastern Christian writings

The Christian East: Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic and Arabic.

Severus of Antioch · Philoxenus of Mabbug · Jacob of Edessa · Bar Hebraeus · Mark of Ephesus

John Duns Scotus, Opera Omnia, volume 1, 1891

Medieval

Browse the works

The scholastics: the Sentences, the summas and their commentators, from the twelfth century to the fifteenth.

Thomas Aquinas · Albert the Great · John Duns Scotus · Bonaventure · Johannes Capreolus

Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis, 1621

Roman Catholic

Browse the works

Catholic theology, biblical commentary and controversies over the Church, grace and the sacraments.

Robert Bellarmine · Francisco Suárez · Thomas Cajetan · Domingo Báñez

Daniel Chamier, Panstratia Catholica, 1627

Continental Reformed

Browse the works

Reformed theology, biblical interpretation and debates over doctrine, sacraments and church government.

John Calvin · Theodore Beza · Amandus Polanus · Daniel Chamier

English writers

English theological works

Sermons, biblical commentaries and theological works by English-speaking writers, including Puritans and Anglicans.

John Owen · Richard Baxter · John Bunyan · William Perkins · Richard Hooker

Johann Gerhard, Confessio Catholica, 1634

Lutheran

Browse the works

Lutheran teaching on justification, the sacraments and the Church, with commentaries and works of systematic theology.

Martin Luther · Philip Melanchthon · Martin Chemnitz · Johann Gerhard

Christian Wolff, Jus Naturae, 1740

Humanism and Law

Browse the works

Natural law, jurisprudence and the humanists, read beside the theologians who argued with them.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · Christian Wolff · William Blackstone · John Selden · Alberico Gentili

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Free during the beta

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Ask the library a question and read a cited answer. Search nineteen thousand works by meaning rather than by word. Set two authors against each other, keep what you find, and write from it. Every one of these is free while the beta runs. All it takes is an account.

AskA question answered from the corpus. Every page it drew on is cited inline.
Power SearchSearch by meaning rather than by word, across every collection.
CompareTwo to four authors on one topic, side by side, grouped by the work.
ConnectionsThe entire library mapped by citation.
The notebookKeep a passage, write a note on it, and gather passages into collections.
DeskWrite with what you have kept beside you, citations already attached.

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We are actively working on The Faith Received. We expect there are bugs. If you find one, please tell us so we can make it better.

Our Commitment to Transparency

Artificial intelligence was used to translate many of these works. We believe trust comes through transparency. We are committed to always disclosing when artificial intelligence was used, and to continuing to improve these translations over time.

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The Christian tradition is the Christian’s inheritance.

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Scripture

Topics

Research Members

The tradition was written to be read.

Who The Faith Received Is For

Laity

Pastors

Academics

The Apostles’ Creed

The Nicene Creed

The Heidelberg Catechism

Westminster Shorter Catechism

The Didache

On the Incarnation

Confessions

The Imitation of Christ

Resolutions

Institutes of the Christian Religion

Syntagma Theologiae Christianae

The Belgic Confession

Study the texts and their sources.

Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms

The Councils

Latin Fathers

Greek Fathers

Eastern Fathers

Medieval

Roman Catholic

Continental Reformed

English writers

Lutheran

Humanism and Law

Use the tools and support the work.

Share Mere Orthodoxy With Others

Give a membership

For a small team

For your whole organization

For students

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Our Commitment to Transparency

The Christian tradition is
the Christian’s inheritance.

Share Mere Orthodoxy
With Others