A reading list
Old Christian books worth reading
Twelve Christian books between 250 and 1,800 years old that are still worth the time — what each one is, why it lasted, and where to read it without paying. Oldest first, from a martyr’s prison diary in 203 to a fashionable skeptic’s change of mind in 1776.
- 1
203 · Roman Carthage · The oldest book here
The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity
Vibia Perpetua · 203
A young mother’s prison diary from the arena city of Carthage, among the earliest writing by a Christian woman to survive. Her father begged her to sacrifice for her baby’s sake, and she would not.
What it cost Her life, and her son. Her father would not give the baby back after she was condemned, and she died in the arena at Carthage on March 7, 203, after a wild cow failed to kill her and she guided the gladiator’s sword to her own throat. (Sections 6, 20 and 21)
- 2
397 · Roman North Africa · Sixteen centuries old
Confessions
Augustine · 397
Still the most read book here. Augustine invented the form of writing about one’s own inner life, and everything else on this list is downstream of it.
- 3
c. 450 · Roman Britain & Ireland · The only real source on Patrick
Confessio (The Confession of St. Patrick)
Patrick of Ireland · 450
Short, plain, and defensive — Patrick writing against critics late in life. Everything else ever said about him is legend built on these few pages.
- 4
1666 · Puritan England · Written in prison
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
John Bunyan · 1666
The account Bunyan wrote from Bedford gaol twelve years before The Pilgrim’s Progress, covering the same ground as the allegory but literally.
- 5
1670 · France · Unfinished at his death
Pensées
Blaise Pascal · 1670
Fragments for a defense of Christianity Pascal never lived to assemble, found among his papers. It survives as notes, which is much of its power — you watch a first-rate mind working rather than presenting.
- 6
1704 · Algiers & Mecca · First English account of Mecca
A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Muslims
Joseph Pitts · 1704
Published as A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans (1704)
Pitts was captured by corsairs as a teenager, enslaved, forced to convert, and taken on the hajj — making him the first Englishman to describe Mecca from the inside. He then escaped and came home.
- 7
1715 · Scotland · Long a Scottish standard
Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Halyburton
Thomas Halyburton · 1714
A divinity professor’s record of his own doubts, valued for three centuries because it states the case against belief as carefully as the case for it.
- 8
1747 · England · A letter to Gilbert West
Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul
George Lyttelton · 1747
Lyttelton’s case that Paul’s conversion alone, duly considered, proves Christianity — written as a letter to his cousin Gilbert West, both of them former deists.
- 9
1747 · England · The companion volume
Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Gilbert West · 1747
West’s book on the resurrection, which Lyttelton’s letter praises, and the more argued of the two.
- 10
1759 · Königsberg · The Enlightenment’s critic
Socratic Memorabilia
Johann Georg Hamann · 1759
Hamann answered the rationalism of his own city — Kant’s city — in deliberately difficult, aphoristic prose. Hard going, and a direct influence on Kierkegaard.
- 11
1764 · The Atlantic slave trade · Behind ‘Amazing Grace’
An Authentic Narrative
John Newton · 1764
Letters, not a memoir, which is why it reads so plainly. Newton does not present his turning as instant — he remained in the slave trade for years afterward, and says so.
- 12
1776 · England · A skeptic’s short case
A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion
Soame Jenyns · 1776
Jenyns had been a fashionable skeptic and wrote this brief argument late, to the surprise of his circle. Its shortness was the point: he wanted it read.
Questions about reading old Christian books
- What are the best old Christian books to read?
- Augustine’s Confessions (397), Bunyan’s Grace Abounding (1666), Pascal’s Pensées (1670) and John Newton’s Authentic Narrative (1764) are the four most often named, and all four are short enough to finish. Patrick’s Confessio is shorter still — an hour at most.
- Where can I read old Christian books for free?
- Every book on this list is old enough that its copyright has expired, so full scans are free at Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive and the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Each page here links its free source directly. We also sell typeset editions of some of them, which is our edition of a free text — never exclusive access to it.
- Are old Christian books hard to read?
- Some are, and not always for the reason people expect. Books printed before about 1800 use the long s — “myſelf”, “circumſtance” — which is a genuine obstacle for the first few pages of Newton and Pitts. The sentences themselves are usually plainer than modern religious writing, not more ornate. We measure and publish the scan quality of every source we link, so you can see what you are getting into.
- How old does a book have to be to be free?
- In the United States, anything published before 1930 is in the public domain, and that boundary moves forward a year at a time. Everything on this list predates 1800, so it is free everywhere.
More reading lists
T.S. Baker — clean editions of the classics, free sources linked.