This is the most substantial work to date on the Belgic Confession in the English language, a worthy addition to the Texts and Studies in Reformation and post-Reformation Thought series, under the general editorship of Richard A. Muller. A work of this quality is certainly overdue, since the Belgic Confession was the most important confession to emerge from the Reformation in the Netherlands and continues to serve as a confessional standard in those Churches which trace their descent from that Reformation. In this volume Gootjes provides a comprehensive and detailed study of the documentary sources through which he seeks to determine the provenance and authorship of the Confession, as well as the textual relationships between it and the related Reformed confessions on which it drew. In regard to the last, Gootjes is to be commended for his careful and exacting analysis of the organisation and content of those confessions, an analysis which the author facilitates by comparing sections of them either in parallel columns or in extended indented type. These arrangements are followed by instructive commentary that helps the reader to situate the Belgic Confession in the context of the broader ecclesiastical and theological currents in the world of the Calvinian Reformation. Especially noteworthy is the chapter on the role of the Confession in the theological debates that the international Synod of Dort was convened to settle in 1618. Cootjes succeeds here in illuminating the general theological issues at stake through a close reading of how the Reformed and the Remonstrants (the opponents in the debates) interpreted the various articles of the Belgic Confession. The overall narrative is supplemented by a concluding chapter on the languages into which the confession has been translated. Here the author provides an informative account of the reception and transmission of the document into those Reformed Churches which have ratified it as a rule of faith. This chapter is followed by a series of appendices that contain source documents reproduced in their original languages. These will prove helpful for the scholar who will want to evaluate how Cootjes makes use of them in presenting his arguments. That scholar, and anyone else who reads this fine volume, will in any case appreciate the service that Cootjes has rendered the scholarly community in this presentation of the history of the Belgic Confession.