This is a thoughtful, carefully developed study of the significant role that worship played in the formation and the self-understanding of Particular Baptists in seventeenth-century England. Ward claims that the early Baptist quest for ‘pure’ institutional patterns of worship, a form of worship ideally based on biblical prescription alone without the admixture of human inventions, provided the guiding principle behind every innovation in early Baptist life, including their affirmation of believer's baptism and their resolute opposition to paedobaptist practice. This emphasis, indeed this Baptist preoccupation with unearthing the one true, unadulterated New Testament model of Christian worship, was also an obsession of radical Puritans and separatists of the era. Ward claims, however, that Baptists pushed the logic of their convictions into a distinctive ecclesiology that survived intact until they encountered the reductionist worship patterns of Quakers, and Baptists themselves began to founder on the rocks of the hymn-singing controversy at the Restoration. The latter controversy especially, according to Ward, confirmed the book's thesis that worship functioned as ‘the early Baptist distinctive’ as much as it paradoxically led to the dissolution of Baptist unity in its aftermath (p. 209). Pure worship was never again at the centre of their identity. But, while it lasted, Ward argues that matters of worship, both external and internal, were paramount to Particular Baptist identity. It shaped their theological convictions about congregational freedom, their need to separate from other nonconformists, their biblical hermeneutic, their understanding and practice of baptism, and much more. If it suffers any insufficiencies, the book could have profited from a stricter editorial hand. Occasionally, Ward slips into a folksy style that begs for clarity and perhaps too readily reflects his own Southern Baptist ecclesial context, such as his early plea to readers to ‘please bear with this book's presentation, for it will offer a benevolent approach to a trendy matter of surprising historical significance’ (p. 1). In a similar fashion, some readers might find Ward's language oddly out of sync with current publishing standards in his almost complete lack of attention to gender inclusive language in his own text, in particular his consistent use of ‘man’ or ‘men’ for humankind. Finally, the author also makes large claims for the uniqueness of his thesis that pure worship was the sine quo non of early Baptist identity, often summarily dismissing the work of other scholars for having missed this all-encompassing theme. At times Ward even appears to know what other scholars were thinking, or not thinking, asserting, for example, that B. R. White wrote about issues of worship ‘without realizing it’ (p. 135 n. 81), and that D. B. Riker's misdating of a primary source indicated ‘non-interest in the matter’ (pp. 183–4 n. 2). For the most part, however, this is a serious work of scholarship that deserves attention from anyone interested in the theological underpinnings of seventeenth-century English dissent.