Kenneth Woo displays fine historical and theological skills here, focusing on John Calvin's Quatre Sermons de M. Iehan Calvin traictans des matières fort utile pour nostre temps, avec briefve exposition du Pseaume lxxxvii (Geneva: Robert Estienne, 1552) – their purposes for Calvin and the way in which five separate English translations were appropriated by their translators to express their own convictions in sixteenth-century English contexts. Woo convincingly shows how Calvin's anti-Nicodemite polemic ‘could be adapted for completely different audiences’ (p. 3). Their translations of Calvin in their environments had ‘little to do with Nicodemism’ (p. 4).

Calvin published these sermons to oppose the behaviour of French evangelicals whom he called ‘Nicodemites’, imitators of the biblical Nicodemus, who came to Jesus ‘by night’ (John iii). These French Protestants sought to hide their personal convictions by participating in the Roman mass to avoid being apprehended and punished. Woo offers a close contextual analysis of Calvin's work, with its distinctive content and form, as well as its reception history. In the only sermons that Calvin personally prepared for publication, Woo shows that Calvin's agenda went beyond Nicodemism itself and that he had a variety of intentions with his work which targeted multiple groups simultaneously (pp. 16–17).

Calvin's Quatre Sermons, published in Geneva, argue for ‘flight as the duty of evangelicals facing persecution’ (p. 26). This was their duty under God. But Woo contends that these sermons also reflect ‘Calvin's worries over mounting tensions and the growing hostility toward the city's French immigrants, which would erupt to open conflict between the ministers and their opponents from 1553 to 1555’ (p. 27). Flight is the duty of the persecuted, to avoid idolatry. But Calvin advocates recognition that exile can lead to God's spiritual provision through the Church's ministry. Natives and refugees in Geneva can be provided for in the Church's established ministry – where pure worship is practised, and God's gifts are rightly ordered. The benefits of God's Church are here present. This means that these sermons ‘functioned as a work of political persuasion, skillfully woven to diffuse discontent with Calvin and his ministry’ (p. 30).

Woo puts it succinctly: Calvin's anti-Nicodemism in the Quatre Sermons innovatively unites ‘two key themes: (1) political exile is the believer's embrace of spiritual exile; and (2) God meets Christians in this exilic context via the ministry of the rightly ordered church’ (p. 37). In Geneva, ‘God sustains his people in exile via the church's visible polity and ministry’ (pp. 50–1). Implicitly, Calvin's Genevan ministry is God's gift to God's people.

Through his sermon arrangement, Calvin was arguing that ‘pilgrims starving in the wilderness of idolatry must stop at nothing to find pure spiritual nourishment in a properly reformed church’ (p. 57). In the face of mounting opposition, especially in relation to the Bolsec affair, Calvin chose to publish sermons against French Nicodemism – to be ‘another vehicle to exert influence through persuasion’ and to ‘fit neatly into the Genevan clergy's domestic political agenda as an exhibit in favor of their, and Calvin's, significance and authority before the court of public opinion’ (p. 61). Calvin uses a ‘flexibility of address’ to aim at two audiences at the same time as they draw different conclusions from the 1552 messages: the French are divinely supposed to leave; the Genevans are experiencing a divinely ordained blessing (p. 65).

Five English translations of Quatre Sermons appeared between 1553 and 1584. The Roman Catholicism of Queen Mary followed by Elizabeth's church reforms meant that English Protestants had their own issues with ‘Nicodemism’ and ‘dissimulation’. In the late sixteenth century, Calvin's work was ‘translated more often than any other continental work treating Nicodemism’ (p. 103).

In 1553 Claude Baduel published a Latin translation of Calvin's work, at Calvin's request. While Baduel expanded and altered Calvin's French at points, Woo does not find any attempts to ‘subvert Calvin’, the changes being ‘designed to clarify the author's intended point’ (p. 114).

Rowland Hall's 1561 edition presents Calvin as a model for English preachers, as ‘an example of sound preaching needful for the English church’ (p. 116).

The Puritan printer Robert Waldegrave's 1581 edition published only Calvin's second sermon – about martyrdom – and did not indicate this was an abridgement of the original work. It functioned as an ‘anti-Roman propaganda piece’ (p. 119). Waldegrave crystallised the case for ‘true martyrdom’ so that the false teachings of Catholic propaganda could be met.

The playwright Anthony Munday's 1584 edition was a reissue of Robert Horne's 1553 translation designed to advance Munday's public credentials as a loyal Protestant adherent of the establishment. In his preface he lauded his patron, the earl of Leicester, as a valiant defender of God's people. Calvin himself is not named in the book – invoked simply as ‘Author’. This self-serving translation had as its goal, says Woo, for ‘readers to see “Munday” and think “Leicester, Horne, and Calvin”’ (p. 131).

Astonishingly, none of these three translations ‘dealt with Nicodemism’ (p. 132). All focused on topics different from Calvin's original work.

Two translations demarcated divisions among evangelicals in the English Church. Robert Horne's 1553 translation excluded Calvin's preface and his final two sermons, which had spoken positively of exile. Horne was a Marian exile and wanted to present his decision to leave as a ‘surprise affliction’ which he bravely bore. Later, Horne returned and became bishop of Winchester. Horne wanted to attack dissimulation among fellow Protestants who were Nicodemites in the Marian Church (p. 160).

The 1579 translation by John Field, who was imprisoned as co-author of An admonition to the parliament, was an adaptation of Calvin to attack moderates in the Elizabethan Church. A number of Field's works were shaped by the contentions between conformists and his own Presbyterian party. He portrayed Catholics, radical sects and moderate Protestants as threats to England. His numerous works in this period, along with the Calvin translation, decried moral laxity and urged Puritan sympathisers to press for ecclesiastical change (p. 173).

Woo splendidly shows that ‘Calvin's adaptive use of Nicodemism resulted in attractive opportunities for deploying his rhetoric and reputation in similarly strategic ways not lost on his English readers’ (p. 204). This is an excellent work of scholarship.