This volume is an edition of ten sermons, and some extracts from lectures, that claims to provide an accurate picture of the development of Andrewes's theological views and rhetorical style. It has the benefit of notes by a scholar who is not only an expert in the work of Lancelot Andrewes but has a thorough understanding of theological and political issues in the Jacobean period. Thus the essay on each text is enlightening in terms of its historical significance, as well as in terms of its relationship to Andrewes's other work. Historical contextualising is this editor's priority, and he presents this volume as a corrective to previous editions which have presented Andrewes only as a Jacobean court preacher. Thus this edition includes selections from The pattern of catechistical doctrine, early lectures given in the 1580s, which were in the Interregnum appropriated by both Laudians and Puritans in support of their diverse causes. Peter McCullough, by careful editing and introduction of these extracts, allows the reader to recapture as far as possible the original sense of the lectures, helping to qualify views of Andrewes based on his late doctrinal positions. Another surprise inclusion is Andrewes's 1590 sermon delivered as part of his DD examination at Cambridge: radical in its time, it was eventually published in this English version as Sacrilege a snare in 1649 – by the Parliamentary Presbyterian faction to which Andrewes in his time had been a sworn enemy. The 1591 lecture on the creation of Eve is a surprisingly liberal contribution to the gender debate of the late sixteenth/early seventeenth century.

A feature of this edition is the inclusion of manuscript witnesses, rather rare in the absence of Andrewes's holographs. It includes the transcription of a recently-discovered manuscript which represents Andrewes's prepared sermon for St Mary's Hospital, Spitalfields, Easter 1588. This appendix offers an opportunity for the reader to compare the prepared version with that which was actually preached, probably represented by the printed texts of 1629/30. To help the reader in this task, appendix 2 provides a line-by-line comparison between the two versions. McCullough also includes collation from the manuscript by Andrewes's amanuensis, Samuel Wright, for the sermon at Whitehall, Easter 1620, which was corrected by Andrewes himself. Two texts in this edition are from a 1657 volume claiming to be the transcripts of notes taken by listeners in the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, and the editor makes a plea for these texts to be returned to the Andrewes canon.

The sermons made famous by T. S. Eliot are not included in this volume, consonant with the editor's stated intention to produce an Andrewes who would have been recognised by his contemporaries. Every inclusion (and significant exclusion) is thoroughly discussed and justified by Peter McCullough, in an edition which will extend and amplify the interest of Lancelot Andrewes to a growing readership of historical and literary scholars.