Nearly a decade ago, I reviewed Chad van Dixhoorn's meticulous and magisterial five-volume Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly. It is a pleasure now to review what is in effect “a sixth volume” in that series, the journal of John Lightfoot (20). Lightfoot (1602–75) was a church minister and noted Hebrew scholar, and, for that reason, a voice to be regarded in the Assembly. What has been conventionally called his “journal” is in fact four separate journals. The final three journals we knew about from John Rogers Pitman's nineteenth-century edition of Lightfoot's journals and letters, which was incomplete and not always accurate. Most importantly, volume 1 appeared only in a truncated, fragmentary, and second-hand nature as the original was nowhere to hand. That manuscript was discovered only recently by van Dixhoorn. This volume, then, fills a significant lacuna not just in Lightfoot's journals but in the records of the Assembly itself, as the minutes of its first 44 sessions are no longer extant. The recovered account in Lightfoot's first journal fills in that missing story. Thus, all four journals appear in their entirety for the first time. For this reason, van Dixhoorn's volume carries enormous significance.

In addition to the text of the journals, the volume contains an introduction, draft documents, and miscellanea from volumes 2–4, a list of Assembly members, and a cross-reference to the pagination of the Pitman edition. The editorial approach to the text matches that of the Minutes and Papers. The page layout is the same: a headnote offers a description of each day's activities; Lightfoot's text is clearly transcribed; and there are two series of footnotes, one for textual notes and the other for explanatory annotations. The effect is to integrate this volume into the companion series with ease. Lightfoot's account begins with the opening session of the Assembly on July 1, 1643 and ends abruptly 350 sessions later on December 31, 1644. Even so, the Assembly itself still had almost a decade left to run (meeting for the final time in April 1653). We do not know why he chose to stop writing. One wonders if, eighteen months in, he had begun to sense the enormity of the task he had taken on.

The journals are both an account of the Assembly's activities and a record of Lightfoot's own perceptions and experiences. His presentation of the opening sessions is about as impersonal as the Minutes themselves, but this changes as time moves on. His entries reflect his “wholehearted participation” in the Assembly project, “his own vigorously expressed viewpoints on assembly debates, [and] his own colourful comments on the gathering's personal dynamics and day-to-day work” (6). Lightfoot's posthumous reputation was shaped by his early biographer and editor, John Strype, who, writing in the Restoration context, worked selectively to play down Lightfoot's reforming impulses and his advocacy of Presbyterianism. The resulting account, perpetuated by Pitman, is, as van Dixhoorn argues, highly implausible when seen alongside a complete transcription of his journals, where he comes across as the very embodiment of a Puritan divine.

In a brief review, it is impossible to do justice to what this volume is capable of yielding up to interested scholars, but an example at an important moment may serve as an illustration. On Thursday, October 12, 1643, the Assembly's revision of the 39 articles had reached Article 16. It is certainly possible to track the course of that session's debate through both the Minutes and Lightfoot's journal as key phrases recur in both. But the speakers included and the way their points are captured vary considerably between the two sources. Thus, the Journal fleshes out and expands upon the record in the Minutes. For instance, in Thomas Goodwin's discussion of the permanence of grace in the believer, Lightfoot records a potent metaphor: “The edge of the knife of grace may be lost but not the mettle” (122). In the Minutes, the power of the metaphor is hopelessly muted: “In a knife ther is a mettaile & the edge …” (Minutes [2012], ii: 194). The impression in the Minutes is that the debate ended soon after Goodwin's flourish, but Lightfoot records there was “a very long debate upon this point.” Then Parliament sent an instruction to the Assembly to cease their revision of the 39 articles and to focus instead on church discipline and government. In the Minutes, this instruction is indicated in a cursory and matter-of-fact fashion, but Lightfoot tells us the order was “long looked & wished for” (122). Perhaps sensing the portent of the order, Lightfoot chose to end his first journal there and begin a new one. Where the Minutes simply move as usual on to the next day's work, Lightfoot opens his new journal with a summary of the previous day's events and a transcription of Parliament's order. Between the two accounts, there is, then, not only an impressive amount of reinforcing overlap but also important divergent information and (from Lightfoot) a colorful perspective that serves to enrich our understanding of the Assembly's activities.

Van Dixhoorn has devoted his career to opening up the Westminster Assembly in service to scholarship. This edition is another fine installment in that great task. It is impressive how he can bring in his detailed knowledge of the Assembly to inform the headnotes to each day's activities, frequently going beyond what Lightfoot himself tells us and providing us with guidance far more enriching than mere summary or description. Likewise, the footnotes regularly take the reader to a rich array of other source material or insights gathered around the Assembly. We could not hope for a more accessible entryway into a comprehensive understanding of the Westminster Assembly.