This is a reading library of Anglican divinity: the divines of the English Church from the Reformation to the early twentieth century, set beside the Fathers of the primitive Church whom they constantly cite. The texts are old, scanned from the printed page, and given here whole — not summarised, not modernised, and not corrected of their opinions. What the divines held, they are allowed to say.

Every passage keeps its attribution: author, title, year, and the page it was taken from, so that anything found here may be traced back and quoted honestly.

The Collections

• The English Divines — Anglican divinity from the Reformation to the early twentieth century 1,506 vols.
• Project Canterbury — Anglican history, biography, liturgy and occasional writing 1,457 vols.
• The Fathers — the primitive Church, in the Ante-Nicene and Nicene translations 257 vols.

3,220 volumes in all, divided into 1,432,286 passages; the writings run from the second century to the twentieth.

Of the Rule Followed Here

The measure of the divinity gathered here is the old one: Holy Scripture as the rule, containing all things necessary to salvation, read in the sense the primitive Church received it — one canon, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries and the Fathers of that period; and with them the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, the Homilies and the Ordinal, as the settled expression of that faith rather than an innovation upon it.

For Readers, and for Machines

The library may be read here in the ordinary way — search it, or walk through the catalogue volume by volume. It is also served to reading machines: an assistant may be pointed at this library and made to search it, read around what it finds, verify a quotation, and cite the volume it came from. The manner of connecting is described here, and a reader’s ticket is free.