Puritan grievances against the Book of Common Prayer in post-Reformation England are well known: Elizabethan critics of Cranmer's liturgy maintained that it was ‘picked out of that dung-hill, the Mass’ and so, not surprisingly, ‘stinketh in the nostrails of God’. What has been less explored by historians is the range of views about public worship contained under the broad umbrella of early modern Puritanism. It was not simply a matter of not liking the Book of Common Prayer but a range of views from wanting a ‘Prayer Book lite’, replacement by another set of liturgical texts such as the Reformed Book of Common Order, or the promotion of extempore prayer as the only authentic form of corporate prayer. In England the Prayer Book was suppressed and replaced by The directory of public worship (1645) which represented a victory for the extempore party as long as the person being extempore was the minister. In fact, Parliament's suppression of the Prayer Book created a space between 1645 and 1662 for significant liturgical experimentation, which was taken advantage of by churchmen across the spectrum: from conservative High Churchman like Jeremy Taylor to radical Protestants.

This period of de facto liturgical deregulation also allowed moderate Presbyterians comfortable with the Reformed tradition of ‘set prayers’, like Richard Baxter, the opportunity to improve and reform the Prayer Book. As a result, when a conference of Presbyterians and episcopalians was called in 1661 at the Savoy to deliberate on matters of liturgy and ministry, Baxter was able to produce his Reformed liturgy in a fortnight (p. 213) as a way forward to establishing a restored national Church that could ‘comprehend’ both episcopalians and Presbyterians. It failed (or at least it did within the bounds of emerging Anglicanism), as did appeals for non-episcopally ordained ministers to remain in post without undergoing re-ordination by a bishop.

Glen Segger has produced the first modern edition of Baxter's important liturgical ‘minority report’ as a lengthy appendix with detailed chapters preceding it analysing key elements such as Sabbath worship, the eucharist and baptism, and pastoral rites. Segger's analysis is, at times, perhaps too uncritical of Baxter's perspective. For example, his discussion of Baxter's life and ministry is highly indebted to his autobiography – a remarkable seventeenth-century source – but surely the very portrayal of Baxter as an apostle of irenicism that he wished future generations to have. The assessment of the conflicts between episcopalians and Presbyterians could have been more nuanced both in terms of the ecclesiastical politics as well as the shades of opinion about church polity in the period. None the less, it is very good indeed to have, in a careful modern edition, such a key text in the debates about the limits of comprehension which would dominate religious discourse after 1660.