A history of doctrines of the Early Church, written and arranged with exceptional clarity by a leading patristic scholar. Canon Kelly describes the development of the principal Christian doctrines from the close of the first century to the middle of the fifth, and from the end of the apostolic age to the council of Chalcedon.

This is a comprehensive study of the well known and the not so well known creeds. Dr Kelly's famous book - a study of the rise, development and use of formularies in the creative centuries of the Church's history - was immediately acclaimed in Europe and America as the standard work on the subject. The book opens with an examination of creedal elements in the New Testament and continues with an enquiry into the relation of creeds to the rite of Baptism. The chapters that follow are devoted to a study of the evidence for 'the rule of faith' in the second century; a long discussion of the old...