According to Karl Barth in his preface to Church dogmatics, III/1, one can only envy the early seventeenth-century theological faculty at Leiden because they were ‘able to publish a commonly agreed and executed dogmatics, the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae’. Barth then wryly asks, ‘Will this ever be possible again?’ (Church dogmatics, III/1, p. ix). Whatever the intention of Barth's remark – most likely tongue-in-cheek – the original disputation was in fact meant to showcase the unity of Reformed Orthodox theology after the Remonstrant controversy. In this way, the Synopsis of a purer theology – a series of disputations held by four Leiden faculty members and first published at the end of December of 1624 – provides an excellent window into the nature and state of Reformed theology after the Synod of Dort (1618–19). Despite this fact, the Synopsis has not been actively in print since Herman Bavinck produced a sixth edition during the neo-Calvinist movement of the late nineteenth century in the Netherlands. But thanks to a recent group of Dutch theologians and historians there is once again access to this early handbook of Reformed theology, which now appears as a bilingual edition with updated Latin orthography, English translation and helpful footnotes that clarify obscure and technical references. This second of three volumes contains disputations related to such topics as predestination, the person and work of Christ, Christian freedom and ecclesiology. It is important to note, though, that the overall tone of the Synopsis is not acerbic but positive. In fact, only disputation xxxix on ‘Purgatory and indulgences’ receives that exclusively aggressive qualifier ‘elenctic’. The four presiding professors – Johannes Polyander (1568–1646), Andreas Rivetus (1573–1651), Antonius Walaeus (1572–1639) and Antonius Thysius (1565–1640) – desired, according to their own preface to the entire Synopsis, a ‘total single-mindedness’ (Synopsis purioris theologiae, ed. Dolf te Velde, i, Leiden 2015, 27) in belief and thought so as to foster peace and unity in the truth, especially after the ecclesial strife surrounding Dort. Such ‘total single-mindedness’ led to the profound use of the Synopsis as a ‘textbook on later theological instruction at Leiden’ (p. 17), as well as to its future influence on Herman Bavinck, Karl Barth and the late John Webster (see the first chapter in his collection of essays, God without measure: working papers in Christian theology, i, London 2015). Overall then, as an early survey of academic theology in the Reformed Church, the Synopsis is pertinent both to the historian and dogmatician, and its availability in English should lead to the continued historical re-evaluation and theological ressourcement of Reformed theology in that oft-neglected period after the Synod of Dort.