C.H. Spurgeon once said, "[t]he longer I live the clearer does it appear that John Calvin's system is the nearest to perfection." (cited in Christian History magazine, Vol. 5, No. 4).

Ironically, Credenda Agenda (a magazine that denounces those who uphold what Calvin teaches about worship in this book) reviewed this work stating,

"...the relevance of Calvin's book today is exceptional. Apart from the grace of God, the human heart never changes. Men have always loved external religion, and unless God saves them, they always will. But God demands heart religion... His writing is relevant because the church today is in dire need of a similar reformation and revival. Like Calvin, some few believers today see 'the present condition of the Church... to be very miserable, and almost desperate.'

Our context is different in one key respect however. The church needing reformation in Calvin's day was the tradition-encrusted church of Rome. Shortly after the Reformation, for those leaving Rome behind, two streams became apparent. One was the stream of classical Protestant orthodoxy, represented today by a handful of Gideons in their desktop publishing winevats. The other was the left wing of the Reformation -- the anabaptist movement. In the early years, the anabaptists were suffering outsiders. But today the anabaptist church is the Establishment -- an establishment governed by a chaos of traditions instead of biblical worship.

Everywhere we look we see Christians approaching God with observances in worship which Calvin calls 'the random offspring of their own brain' (which was Calvin's way of rebuking those who reject the regulative principle of worship; which ironically, the writers of this very statement [Credenda Agenda] do--RB)."

Though this work is not an elaborate systematic presentation of the foundations of Christianity, such as Calvin's Institutes, it has still been correctly acknowledged as one of the most important documents of the Reformation. Calvin here pleads the cause dearest to his heart before an assembly perhaps the most august that Europe could have furnished in that day.

It has been said that the animated style used by Calvin in this work would not lose by comparison with any thing in the celebrated "Dedication" prefixed to his Institutes. To this day, The Necessity of Reforming the Church remains a powerful weapon, both defensive and offensive, to fight the contemporary battle for true doctrine, faithful (or biblically regulated) worship and Scriptural church government.

Here, in one of Calvin's classic works, we find the answers to many of the vexing questions which continue to agitate the Church in our day -- over four and a half centuries after this great Reformer first penned these words.