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The Faith Received Beta

The Christian tradition is
the Christian’s inheritance.

The Faith Received gathers the creeds, confessions, and classic works of the Christian tradition into a single reading room, designed to be publicly available, practically usable, and beautifully readable.

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Where to start

Read

Find any work in the library by name.

The library →

Scripture

A whole Bible commentary using historic primary sources.

The index →

Topics

What the church has said on every major topic.

The index →

Research Members

Search everything and keep what you find.

The tools →

Devotional

The tradition was written to be used.

Most of what the church wrote across two thousand years was meant for use rather than for the archive: catechisms written to teach children, confessions drawn up by congregations under pressure, prayers set down for people who did not know what to say. Read a question or a page at a time, they steady a faith that has gone thin. The people who wrote them had been through what you are going through.

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30,000Works
1.2MPages
1,495First translations
FreeEvery page

Who The Faith Received Is For

Laity

Have the creeds, catechisms, confessions, and riches of church history always in your pocket. Reference, memorize, and explore the great Christian tradition.

Pastors

Prepare your sermons and counsel your people with the width and depth of historical Christian thought.

Academics

Explore a vast library of primary theological sources across the Christian traditions, most of which are now in English for the first time.

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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Stephen Charnock

1682

The Existence and Attributes of God

A comprehensive Puritan treatise on the divine perfections — 14 discourses exploring God’s existence, eternity, immutability, omnipresence, and other attributes.

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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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Browse the whole library →

Study

Over a million pages unlocked for the first time.

This theology has sat in folio in a handful of research libraries where only a few specialists could read it. The English now runs beside the Latin with the scanned page beside both.

Search the library

The collections

Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms

260 documents

The confessional record from the second century to the twentieth, with the conciliar acts alongside it.

Nicaea · Chalcedon · Augsburg · Trent · Westminster

Patrologia Graeca

2,976 works

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

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

Patrologia Latina

8,967 works

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

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

Patrologia Orientalis

400 works

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

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

The Latin Library

2,285 works

Scholastic and reformation divinity in Latin, with English alongside.

Thomas Aquinas · Martin Luther · John Calvin · Duns Scotus · Francisco Suárez

Early English Books

15,569 works

Nearly everything printed in English before 1700, sermons and controversy alike.

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

Browse Full Library

Everything in the room

  • Creeds & Catechisms · 69 documents
  • The Library · 8 collections, 1.2M pages
  • Facing translation · 1,495 works newly in English
  • Topics · 14 doctrinal paths
  • Scripture · every father who cites a verse
  • Today · a question a day
  • Devotional · build a reading plan
  • Search · across every collection
  • Citations · type a reference, open the page
  • Memorize · three catechisms
  • In the reader · English, Latin, or both
  • Page scans · check the transcription
  • Notebook · highlight, note, export
  • Modern spelling · for the older English
  • Continue reading · picks up where you left off

For members

Get the most from The Faith Received.

  • AskA question answered from the corpus. Every page it drew on is cited inline.
  • Semantic searchSearch by meaning rather than by word across thirty thousand works.
  • Latin word formsOne search across every inflection of a word.
  • ConstellationsThe passages that stand behind a passage. Share the set as a link.
  • Citation exportCopy, permalink, BibTeX or Zotero. Each one carries its locus.
  • The notebookHighlight a paragraph, keep a private note, or write your own translation.

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Beta

A third of the Latin library is catalogued but not yet readable. The scripture and topic indexes are incomplete. Some translations are machine-assisted and are being checked.

Every text here is free to read. The research tools are for members. If something is broken, tell us.