Originally published: London: Printed for W. Clarke and Sons, 1817. [xii], 244, [21] pp. Reprint of the last and best edition with Butler and Hargrave's notes, and with mistakes corrected from the 1681 folio edition. "Coke's Third Institutes gives us a Treatise of great learning, and not unworthy the hand that produced it; ... Having run over all criminal matters, and their legal punishments, he concludes with the nature of pardons and restitutions; showing how far, in each of these, our Kings can process alone, and where they want the assistance and joint power of the Parliaments." --J. G. Marvin, Legal Bibliography (1847) 208.

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To attempt to study Scripture without studying its law is to deny it. To attempt to understand Western civilization apart from the impact of Biblical law within it and upon it is to seek a fictitious history and to reject twenty centuries and their progress. The Institutes of Biblical Law has as its purpose a reversal of the present trend. it is called "Institutes" in the older meaning of the that word, i.e., fundamental principles, here of law, because it is intended as a beginning, as an instituting consideration of that law which must govern society, and which shall govern society under God. To understand Biblical law, it is necessary to understand also certain basic characteristics of that law. In it, certain broad premises or principles are declared. These are declarations of basic law. The Ten Commandments give us such declarations. A second characteristics of Biblical law, is that the major portion of the law is case law, i.e., the illustration of the basic principle in terms of specific cases. These specific cases are often illustrations of the extent of the application of the law; that is, by citing a minimal type of case, the necessary jurisdictions of the law are revealed. The law, then, asserts principles and cites cases to develop the implications of those principles, with is purpose and direction the restitution of God's order.