This substantial theological survey of nearly 400 pages is intended as the first part of a multi-volume work on Anglican theological method. Avis, who has already written widely on the nature of Anglican identity, regards the issue of authority as central to Anglican method, and defends his case with lengthy surveys of a number of key thinkers from Jewel to Edmund Burke. The content of this volume is intended to be ‘sources of authority’, although in practice there is a significant amount of general extended exposition and frequent citation from secondary authors which can detract from a clear argument. Overall, however, Avis offers useful interpretations of a range of theologians and other thinkers drawn from different styles of thought (even if at times these are rather hagiographic and idealised – see especially the sections on Burke and Butler who was, he claims, ‘unanswerable’). Avis is ready to compare and contrast his chosen figures with thinkers on the continent, most obviously Luther and Calvin, and also to draw links to their later interpreters. He also offers a few excursus on such central Reformation matters as sola scriptura. Avis's choice of authors is mildly idiosyncratic: the Caroline Divines, for instance, who seem to me to be of some importance to the development of Anglican method, do not feature, whereas Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes do. In terms of an original contribution to the study of Anglicanism, the most important section is probably that on the eighteenth century, in which Avis also includes the Wesleys as Anglican theologians. His intention is to counter the claims that the Enlightenment was simply anti-religious (which is probably now seldom made by serious scholars of the period). Avis writes as a theologian and sees theology as essentially an intellectual, cultural and ecclesiastical phenomenon: this will make the book far less useful to church historians who might be somewhat more interested in the political nature of authority and its relationship to a theology of the state. It is as if the Church of England (which is what is meant by ‘Anglican’ in this volume) was somehow a self-contained denomination or confession which made up its own mind. Most monarchs through the period would have begged to differ.