Charles Hodge was Princeton Seminary's leading antebellum theologian. He is known for biblically and historically defending Protestant and Reformed doctrines against the various opponents and critics of his day. Regarding the doctrine of the church and sacraments, Hodge was especially concerned with the assertions of Mercersburg theologians like Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin and Oxford Tractarians like John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey. These theologians promoted views of the church and sacraments that Hodge believed were destructive to traditionally Protestant views of the Christian gospel itself.

This book contains articles on the church and the sacraments that Hodge published in The Princeton Review to confront the High Church views of the church and the sacraments that were found in Mercersburg theology and the Oxford Movement. Hodge didn't address these particular issues in his published Systematic Theology, and many of these articles are here presented in full in book form for the first time.