The Puritans On Conscience And Casuistry

By Joel R. Beeke

When Martin Luther (1483-1546) was asked to recant the views he had expressed in his books, he is said to have replied, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” [1] Ever since Luther, the Reformation faith has revolved around questions of having a good conscience in the presence of God. [2] Since conscience speaks directly in the soul as God’s representative, the Puritans also recognized that understanding and forming the conscience was central to serving the Lord with gladness. “Conscience, it is either the greatest friend or the greatest enemy in the world,” Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) said. [3] The Puritans took up this concept and fleshed it out more fully than the Reformers had done, developing both the doctrine of conscience and considering specific questions of conscience. The Puritan preacher’s most momentous task was awakening and guiding the human conscience.

In this article, I will first discuss Puritan theology of the conscience, and second the development of the Puritan practice of casuistry of conscience.

The Puritans On The Conscience

Several Puritans wrote books on conscience. William Perkins (1558-1602) wrote A Discourse of Conscience Wherein is Set Down the Nature, Properties, and Differences thereof: as also the Way to Get and Keep a Good Conscience; [4] William Ames (1576-1633) wrote Conscience, with the Power and Cases Thereof; [5] William Fenner (1600-1640) wrote The Souls Looking-Glasse, lively representing its Estate before God: With a Treatise of Conscience; Wherein the definitions and distinctions thereof are unfolded, and severall Cases resolved; [6] and Nathanael Vincent (1638-1697) wrote Heaven upon Earth: or, a Discourse Concerning Conscience. [7]

Under the theme of Puritan theology of the conscience, I will first look at the nature of the conscience as created by God; second, the corrupt state of the conscience due to man’s sin; and third, the restoration of conscience by the Word and Spirit of Christ.

The Nature Of The Conscience

According to the Puritans, the conscience is a universal aspect of human nature by which God has established His authority in the soul for men to judge themselves rationally. Norman Clifford writes, “The witness of conscience in man’s soul was the means by which all natural knowledge of God was sustained. The presence of conscience meant the presence of God’s witness and ambassador in the soul of man ever reminding him of his responsibility towards God.” [8]

The Puritans stressed:

1. Everyone has a conscience. The Puritan authors began their works on conscience by stressing, first, that Scripture, experience, and “the light of nature” affirm that every person has a conscience. [9] For example, Nathanael Vincent wrote, “This thing, called conscience, is in everyone; there is no man without it. You may as well suppose a man without an understanding as without a conscience.” [10] Vincent went on to say, “Conscience is not to be escaped; we can no more fly from conscience than we can run away from ourselves.” [11]

2. Conscience empowers self-knowledge and self-judgment. Samuel Ward (1577-1640), following the medieval theologians Hugo of St. Victor (c. 1096-1141) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), wrote of conscience as the soul’s God-given ability to reflect upon itself.12 William Ames (1576-1633) defined conscience as “a man’s judgment of himself according to the judgment of God on him.” [13] The Puritans followed Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in viewing conscience as a part of practical reason, that is, an exercise of the mind of man passing moral judgments. [14]

3. Conscience reasons syllogistically. The Puritans depicted the reasoning of conscience as a syllogistic form, much as Aquinas did. [15] This form of reasoning includes a major premise stating a general principle, then a minor premise stating an observation or fact, then a conclusion that results from putting these premises together. In his treatise on conscience, Ames illustrated the reasoning of conscience with two syllogisms. The major premise of the first syllogism is: He that lives in sin shall die. The minor premise is: I live in sin. The conclusion is: Therefore I shall die. [16] Ames also offered a syllogism of conscience that arrives at a happier conclusion. The major premise is: Whoever believes in Christ shall not die but live. The minor premise is: I believe in Christ. If this is established as true, the believer is free to draw the conclusion: Therefore I shall not die but live. [17] The Puritans say all the acts of conscience have this syllogistic form, even if they take place unconsciously in a moment.

4. Conscience represents God in our soul. The Puritans illustrated the divinely authorized role of conscience in the soul with a number of lively pictures and personifications, such as “God’s deputy,” “the most powerful preacher that can be,” “a register, to witness what is done,” “God’s sergeant he employs to arrest the sinners,” and “the soul’s glass” or mirror to see itself. [18]

In summary, the Puritans taught that human nature universally includes a conscience, that is, the representation of the voice of God, authoritatively leading us to judge ourselves by rational deductions from our knowledge of God’s will and knowledge of ourselves.

The Corruption Of Conscience

For the Puritans, sin was not merely a choice but a corruption of the soul resulting from the Fall. [19] The Puritans viewed the conscience as profoundly affected by man’s fall into sin and misery. They wrote a great deal about various types of evil consciences. Here is a summary of six kinds of evil consciences that they described, moving from the least to the most evil.

1. The Trembling Conscience. The trembling conscience accuses the soul of sin and threatens the soul with God’s wrath. Fenner said a guilty conscience is like “a hell to men here on earth,” [20] a pointer to the reality of the hell coming on sinners. [21] John Trapp said, “One small drop [of guilt] troubles the whole sea of outward comforts.” [22]

2. The Moralist Conscience. This conscience has some good elements, for it is grounded upon God’s law and thus, wrote Richard Bernard (1568-1641), it “produceth much good for the exercise of moral virtues in men’s living together in societies, to preserve justice, equity, to do good works, and to uphold a common peace among them.” [23] But civil virtue cannot save. Bernard said, “A moralist may lift up himself, as the young rich man in the Gospel did, yet can it not give him assurance of eternal life.” [24]

3. The Scrupulous Conscience. The scrupulous conscience makes too much out of religious duties and moral trifles. It is scrupulously religious but does not look to Christ alone for salvation nor find peace in Christ. The scrupulous conscience “determines a thing to be lawful, yet scarcely to be done, lest it should be unlawful,” as Samuel Annesley (ca. 1620-1696) said. [25] It engages in the kind of self-examination that produces aimless introspection and inner gloom. The Puritans would agree with Calvin who said that if you contemplate yourself apart from Christ, the Word, and the Spirit, “that is sure damnation.” [26]

4. The Erring Conscience. Annesley wrote, “Conscience is sometimes deceived through ignorance of what is right, by apprehending a false rule for a true, an error for the will of God: sometimes, through ignorance of the fact, by misapplying a right rule to a wrong action. Conscience, evil informed, takes human traditions and false doctrines, proposed under the show of Divine authority to be the will of God.” [27]

5. The Drowsy Conscience. Annesley wrote of people with such a conscience, “One of the worst kinds of conscience in the world, is the sleepy conscience. Such is the conscience of every unconverted person, that is not yet in horror. Their spirit, that is, their conscience, is asleep (Rom. 11:8)…and therefore, in conversion, Christ doth awaken the conscience.” [28] A drowsy conscience produces a silent conscience, making it like a “sleepy careless coachman who giveth the horses the reins and letteth them run whither they will,” Fenner said. [29]

6. The Seared Conscience. Perkins wrote, “Now the heart of man being exceedingly obstinate and perverse, carrieth him to commit sins even against the light of nature and common sense: by practice of such sins the light of nature is extinguished: and then cometh the reprobate mind, which judges evil good, and good evil: after this follows the seared conscience in which there is no feeling or remorse; and after this comes an exceeding greediness to all manner of sin (Eph. 4:18; Rom. 1:28).” [30] Fenner says that a seared conscience can “swallow down sin like drink and without any remorse.”

The Restoration Of Conscience

In God’s restoration of His image in the soul, He also restores the conscience. This takes place in awakening the conscience by preaching, informing the conscience by Scripture, healing the conscience by the gospel, and exercising the conscience in self-examination.

1. Conscience must be awakened by preaching. One mark of a powerful preacher, according to the Puritans, was the way he would “rip up” men’s consciences to show them what was at the bottom of their hearts. [31] The Westminster Directory for Public Worship says application is difficult for the preacher, for it requires “much prudence, zeal, and meditation, and to the natural and corrupt man will be very unpleasant.” Yet application is necessary so that a preacher’s listeners “may feel the Word of God to be quick and powerful, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and that, if any unbeliever or ignorant person be present, he may have the secrets of his heart made manifest and give glory to God.” [32]

2. Conscience must be informed by Scripture. If conscience is not guided by Scripture, it will still function, but according to inadequate standards. It will fail to condemn when it should, it will justify things that ought not to be justified. The Westminster Confession (20.2) said that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Richard Baxter (1615-1691) explained, “Make not your own judgments or consciences your law, or the maker of your duty; which is but the discerner of the law of God, and of the duty which he maketh you, and of your own obedience or disobedience to him…. It is not ourselves, but God that is our lawgiver.” [33] The purpose of conscience is to make us continually aware of the presence of the holy God. Vincent wrote, “A good conscience will make men set themselves as before God continually.” [34]

3. Conscience must be healed by the Spirit applying the gospel. William Gurnall said, “Peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy.” [35] The gospel announces peace and forgiveness for all who trust in Christ who was crucified for sinners. It is by the Holy Spirit that the conscience lays hold of the gospel by faith in Christ’s blood, finds peace with God, and has growing assurance of salvation. Perkins said, “The principal agent and beginner thereof is the Holy Ghost, enlightening the mind and conscience with spiritual and divine light: and the instrument in this action is the ministry of the gospel whereby the word of life is applied in the name of God to the person of every hearer and this certainty is by little and little conceived in a form of reasoning or practical syllogism framed in the mind by the Holy Ghost.” [36]

4. Conscience must be exercised by regular self-examination. Thomas Watson wrote, “Self-examination is the setting up a court in conscience and keeping a register there, that by strict scrutiny a man may know how things stand between God and his own soul…. A good Christian begins as it were the day of judgment here in his own soul.” [37] Self-examination is especially important, Watson said, in preparation for the Lord’s Supper. [38]

Contrary to some caricatures, the Puritans did not glory in guilt. They gloried in Christ. An awakened conscience served to drive men to Christ. A good conscience enabled men to walk with Christ. Therefore they accepted the conscience as a gift of the Creator, diagnosed the conscience in its disorders from the Fall of man into sin, and worked to restore the conscience to its healthy functioning through the Word of Christ. This treasuring of a good conscience before God led the Puritans into a quest to answer specific cases of conscience, or the science of casuistry, which is my second main topic in this paper.

The Puritans On Casuistry

In giving attention to the awakening and shaping of the human conscience, many Puritans also wrote books on various cases of conscience, which came to be called the casuistry of conscience. [39] Casuistry has been defined as “a technique evolved by the Jesuits for finding excuses for not doing what you ought to do.” [40] The Puritans would abhor such an idea. For them, casuistry was the art of biblical theology applied with moral integrity to various situations. Thomas Merrill says casuistry “may best be understood as a method of blazing trails through the ethical wilderness that too often separates theory from practice, code from conduct, and religion from morality.” [41] The Puritans, as heirs of the Reformers, were deeply concerned to shepherd the flock of God with practical guidance related to what God expected of His covenant people. [42]

This section of my paper will trace the development of Puritan casuistry chronologically from its seminal beginnings, to its systematic development in the hands of William Perkins, the father of Puritan casuistry, to its flowering in the early seventeenth century, its fullness in the 1640s through the 1670s, and then in its fading at the end of the Puritan era. [43]

The Firstfruits Of Puritan Casuistry

The Puritans concurred with Calvin that communicant members of the church should be held accountable to biblical standards for their conduct. Since not all cases were clear, however, Puritan ministers often sought the advice of their colleagues at classis gatherings. These cases became known as cases of conscience. [44] When the classis could not come to a clear resolution on a particular case, they customarily referred such matters to Cambridge University, which Norman Clifford says, “undoubtedly foreshadowed the fact that this University was to produce many of the most outstanding Puritan casuists of the period.” [45]

One of the most active ministers in those early meetings in Cambridge was Richard Greenham (c. 1542-1594), from Dry Drayton, five miles northwest of Cambridge. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) said that many “who came to him with weeping eyes…went from him with cheerful souls.” [46] Scholars today commonly acknowledge Greenham as a pioneer of Puritan casuistry. His pastoral letters and notes recorded by students were later published as “tabletalk” writings. [47] His counsel was incisive. When John Dod (c. 1549-1645) came to him in self-pity, Greenham responded, “Son, son, when affliction lies heavy, sin lies light.” [48]

Richard Rogers (1550-1618), vicar of Wethersfield and member of Braintree Classis, wrote the book Seven Treatises (1604) as a practical manual for Christians with various cases of conscience.49 Rogers wrote both to offer relief to troubled souls and to counteract the Jesuits who were deriding the Reformed for their lack of moral writings.50 The book counsels the Christian to rule his life by exercising watchfulness, practicing meditation, using the Christian armor of Ephesians 6, engaging in prayer, reading Scripture and godly authors, offering thanksgiving, and practicing fasting.51 William Haller writes, “Seven Treatises was the first important exposition of the code of behavior which expressed the English Calvinist, or, more broadly speaking, the Puritan conception of the spiritual and moral life. As such it inaugurated a literature the extent and influence of which in all departments of life can hardly be exaggerated.” [52]

The Father Of Puritan Casuistry

William Perkins (1558-1602), the renowned preacher at Great St. Andrew’s Church, Cambridge, often called “the father of Puritanism,” was the first to bring Puritan casuistry to “some form of method and art.” Thomas Merrill notes that Perkins’s casuistry is important “because it set a pattern for all later work in Protestant moral divinity.” [53] Though a theologian, Perkins ministered to common people effectively, including prisoners on death row. [54]

Perkins wrote two treatises on “cases of conscience,” titled A Discourse of Conscience (1596), and The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience (1606). [55] The first treatise is more theoretical in its description of conscience. [56] Ian Breward summarizes, “A good conscience was a jewel beyond price, because it gave men the assurance of election which enabled them to rejoice in affliction, and to be bold before God and men whatever the outward circumstances. A bad conscience, on the other hand, was in insupportable burden which brought gnawing terror about Judgment which could only be assuaged by the blood of Christ.” [57]

The second treatise provides Bible-based guidance for areas of ethical uncertainty, called cases of conscience. These included personal questions such as how you can know whether or not you are saved. [58] Or, as Merrill notes, they could be social questions like “the right use of money, truth and falsehood, the right use of leisure, the Christian attitude toward war, vows and promises, proper dress, the lawfulness of recreation, policy and prudence.” [59]

By the time of his death, Perkins had become the principle architect of the Puritan movement. In the decades immediately after his death, Perkins’s writings in England outsold those of Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), and Theodore Beza (1519-1605) combined. He “moulded the piety of a whole nation,” H. C. Porter says. [60]

The Flowering Of Puritan Casuistry

The disciples of Perkins published numerous books on Puritan casuistry. William Gouge (1575-1653) wrote The Whole Armour of God (1616), Of Domestical Duties (1622), and many other titles winning him the title of being “a sweet comforter of troubled consciences.” [61] William Whately (1583-1639), another beneficiary of Perkins’s pulpit ministry, wrote several books on practical divinity. [62] Baxter highly recommended Whately’s Ten Commandments (1622). [63]

Robert Bolton (1572-1631) wrote Instructions for Comforting Afflicted Consciences (1626), one of the best Puritan works on consoling the afflicted believer in every aspect of the inner life—mind, heart, conscience, memory, and will. [64] Bolton also published General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God (1626), which he first wrote as a guide for himself. [65] J. I. Packer says of these two books by Bolton, “Richard Baxter went over all this ground a generation later in much greater detail, and with a greater power of thought, but Bolton yields nothing to Baxter in experimental warmth and depth, and sometimes surpasses him.” [66]

Perkins’s most famous disciple was William Ames (1576-1633), who wrote Conscience, with the Power and Cases Thereof (first published in Latin, 1630; in English, 1639). [67] Samuel Morison, a Harvard historian, describes this important manual of Puritan casuistry as “one of the most valuable sources of Puritan morality.” [68] It went through nearly twenty printings in less than thirty years. Ames’s Conscience, with the Power and Cases Thereof is an expanded commentary of sorts on Book 2 of his most famous work, The Marrow of Theology. [69] Baxter said Perkins did valuable service in promoting Reformed casuistry, but “Ames hath exceeded all.” [70]

A book that helped popularize the Puritan understanding of conscience for the layperson was William Fenner’s (1600-1640) The Souls Looking-Glasse, lively representing its Estate before God: With a Treatise of Conscience (1643). “The bond of conscience is the law of God,” he said. God’s law binds our consciences to Himself and His Word even more than we are bound to governmental leaders and other kinds of human authority. [71] The Scriptures and sacraments form the primary bond of conscience. [72] Human authorities such as a husband, a father, a school teacher, a parent, a magistrate, or an employer form a secondary bond of conscience only insofar as they are authorized by God and His law. [73]

The Fullness Of Puritan Casuistry

By the late 1640s, Puritan casuistry was considered such an integral part of ministry that the Westminster Assembly of Divines required a ministerial candidate to be examined in his “skill in the sense and meaning of such places of the Scripture as shall be proposed unto him in cases of conscience.” [74] In the mid-seventeenth century, volumes of casuistry poured off the press, ranging from disputes over Episcopal church government [75] to questions about regeneration. [76]

One of the most significant Puritan casuistry writers in the 1650s was Thomas Brooks (1608-1680), rector of St. Margaret’s, New Fish Street Hill, London, the first church that burned to the ground in the Great Fire of London (1666). Tim Keller provides this helpful summary of Brooks’s treatise, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1653):

Brooks discusses twelve types of temptation, eight varieties of discouragement, eight kinds of depression, and four classes of spiritual pride! Brooks’ “temptation” sections are addressed to anyone struggling with besetting patterns of sin, particularly to those fighting addictions…. The “discouragement” section applies to persons who suffer from ‘burnout’ as well as anxiety, grief, and disappointment…. The “depression” section largely deals with persons whose despair arises from guilt and from a “low self-image.” The Puritans called this condition “accusation,” in which the conscience and the devil attack the person over his failures and sins…. Finally, the section on “pride” deals with several forms of this great sin. It brings out cases of materialism, of power-lust, of intellectual arrogance, of love of ignorance and crudeness, of bitterness, and of jealousy. [77]

In 1659, Samuel Clarke, a Puritan minister and writer, produced three treatises titled The Medulla Theologiae, Golden Apples, and Several cases of Conscience Concerning Astrologie. The first book was one of the largest collections of cases of conscience at that time, yet was only a fraction of what Clarke intended to write before he died. [78] The Cripplegate Morning Exercises also began in 1659. These were early morning sermons delivered by well-known Puritan preachers on various cases of conscience, with titles such as: “How May We Experience in Ourselves, and Evidence to Others, that Serious Godliness is more than a Fancy?” and “What Are the Best Preservatives Against Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow?” These sermons have recently been republished as the first four volumes in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689. [79]

In 1664, when Richard Baxter was in forced retirement by the Act of Uniformity, he began writing his Christian Directory. In this comprehensive survey of practical divinity, Baxter gives directions for ordering one’s life before God, performing duties in family relationships, fulfilling responsibilities within the life of the church, and living uprightly with neighbors and public officials. No Puritan work on applied theology has surpassed this treatise; it is one of the most practical and helpful biblical counseling manuals ever written. Though this volume of one million words was too large to become a popular work, it towered over every other work of its kind for the remainder of the century, and in many ways, is still very useful today.

This is but a sampling of the many Puritan works of casuistry in the 1640s to the 1670s. [80]

The Fading Of Puritan Casuistry

Puritan casuistry faded during the last two decades of the seventeenth century. Though occasional divines such as Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) continued to write on casuistry into the eighteenth century, they were the exceptions that prove the rule. [81] Interestingly, Watts titled his 1731 book, An Humble Attempt toward the Revival of Practical Religion among Christians, indicating the widespread loss of casuistical divinity. [82] Clifford attributes this loss, at least in part, to “the rise of Deism, the struggle with Socinianism and Arminianism and the attacks of Hobbes and Locke on the validity of the idea of conscience, [which] all worked together to create an intellectual and religious atmosphere that was uncongenial to [its] cultivation and further development.” [83] During the Great Awakening of the early 1740s, there was a major revival of practical divinity, particularly through men such as Theodore Frelinghuysen (1691-1747) and George Whitefield (1714-1770), but that too faded away. The form and method of Puritan casuistry was never fully revived. However, the principles of counseling the soul based on biblical directives continue to be practiced by pastors and biblical counselors today, who find the casuistic writings of the Puritans to be rich sources of guidance even in the twenty-first century.

Conclusion: The Courage Of A Good Conscience

By its very nature, conscience must be active. The Puritans aimed to understand the proper role of the conscience and to cultivate it through biblical instruction. They believed that a good conscience does not promote legalism nor carelessness about sin. Rather, peace of conscience strengthens a man’s moral backbone and makes him as bold as a lion. Richard Sibbes said, “We can do nothing well without joy, and a good conscience, which is the ground of joy.” [84] A good conscience was “heaven on earth” because it assured them of eternal bliss.

Another reason why they so cherished their consciences is the power conscience has over present happiness and motivation. As a people often under persecution from the authorities, the Puritans found in conscience a power to stand for the convictions they received from the Bible in the face of harassment, banishment, and death. A sense of divine approval gave them joy in their trials. In the words of Vincent,

A good conscience steels a man’s heart with courage, and makes him fearless before his enemies. Paul earnestly beheld the council. He was not afraid to face them, because his conscience was clear. Nay, we read that Felix the judge trembled, while Paul the prisoner was confident. The reason was, because the judge had a bad conscience…but the prisoner being acquitted by a good conscience, did not tremble but rejoiced at the thoughts of judgment to come. [85]

Notes

1. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950), 185. This paper was read at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Dallas, Texas, on October 29, 2011. This article is expanded in Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012).
2. For Calvin on conscience, see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.19.15. Cf. David Foxgrover, “John Calvin’s Understanding of Conscience” (PhD dissertation, Claremont, 1978).
3. The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1862-1864; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), 7:490.
4. William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience (London, 1596).
5. William Ames, Conscience, with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1639).
6. William Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse (Cambridge: Roger Daniel, for John Rothwell, 1643).
7. Nathanael Vincent, Heaven upon Earth (London: for Thomas Parkhurst, 1676).
8. Norman Keith Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity in English Puritanism During the Seventeenth Century: Its Origins, Development and Significance” (PhD diss., University of London, 1957), 149.
9. Vincent, Heaven upon Earth, 5-17.
10. Vincent, Heaven upon Earth, 17-18.
11. Vincent, Heaven upon Earth, 21. See also Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 23.
12. Samuel Ward, “Balm from Gilead to Recover Conscience,” in Sermons and Treatises (1636; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1996), 97. See Gary Brady, “A Study of Ideas of the Conscience in Puritan Writings, 1590-1640” (ThM thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2006), 46. See also Sibbes, Works, 3:208; Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience: Tending to Resolve Doubts (London: R. I. for Andrew Crook, 1649), 1-22.
13. Ames, Conscience, 1. See James I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1990), 111.
14. Packer says that Ames’s definition comes from Aquinas (Quest for Godliness, 109). Ames had a copy of the works of Thomas Aquinas in his library (Keith L. Sprunger, “The Learned Doctor Ames” [PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1963], 206). Vincent quoted Aquinas’s definition of conscience as the application of our knowledge to our actions to testify regarding our past actions, to judge and bind regarding possible future actions (Vincent, Heaven on Earth, 30; citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Q. 79, Art. 13). Most Puritans taught that the seat of the conscience is rooted in the reasonable soul or the understanding, in harmony with the Dominican and Thomistic tradition; a minority placed the seat of the conscience in the will, in accord with the Franciscan tradition. A few, such as Richard Baxter, refused to take sides (The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, ed. William Orme [London: James Duncan, 1830], 6:96-97). Practically speaking, this variance of views made no substantial difference (Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 149-56; cf. Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century, With Special Reference to Jeremy Taylor [London: S.P.C.K., 1952], 67-69).
15. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 235-37. Syllogistic reasoning as a method dates back to Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). “A syllogism is a discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so. I mean by the last phrase that they produce the consequence, and by this, that no further term is required from without in order to make the consequence necessary.” Aristotle, Analytica Priora, trans. A. J. Jenkinson, 1.1, quoted by Brady, 64, and available online at: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/ (accessed October 17, 2011).
16. Ames, Conscience, 3.
17. Ames, Conscience, 3.
18. The Works of David Clarkson (1864; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1988), 2:475; The Works of George Swinnock (1868; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 5:64; Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 33; Immanuel Bourne, The Anatomie of Conscience (London, 1623), 9; William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 2 vols. in one (1864; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 1:522; The Works of Robert Harris (London: James Flesher for John Bartlet, 1654), 2:18.
19. Daniel Webber, “The Puritan Pastor as Counsellor,” in The Office and Work of the Minister, Westminster Conference 1986 (London: Westminster Conference, 1987), 84. For the Puritans on sin, see Jeremiah Burroughs, The Evil of Evils (1654; reprint, Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995); Ralph Venning, The Plague of Plagues (1669; reprint, London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965); Thomas Watson, The Mischief of Sin (1671; reprint, Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994); Samuel Bolton, “Sin: the Greatest Evil,” in Puritans on Conversion (Pittsburgh: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 1-69. The most powerful Puritan work on the dread condition of original sin is Thomas Goodwin, “An Unregenerate Man’s Guiltiness Before God in Respect of Sin and Punishment,” vol. 10 of The Works of Thomas Goodwin (1865; reprint, Eureka, Calif.: Tanski, 1996). The classic doctrinal Puritan work on the subject is Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, vol. 3 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (1758; New Haven: Yale, 1970). The best secondary source on the Edwardsean view is C. Samuel Storms, Tragedy in Eden: Original Sin in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985). Thomas Boston’s classic, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State (1720; reprint, London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), focuses on the four states of innocence, depravity, grace, and glory, but his section on imputed and inherited depravity is especially poignant. He details how Adam’s original sin broke man’s relationship with God as well as each of the Ten Commandments.
20. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 124.
21. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 125-26. See also Thomas Fuller, The Holy and Profane States (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1865), 102; Thomas Fuller, The Cause and Cvre of a VVovnded Conscience (London: G. D. for John Williams, 1649), 28; The Works of John Flavel (1820; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 5:455.
22. John Trapp, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, ed. Hugh Martin (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1868), 3:39 [on Prov. 10:22].
23. Richard Bernard, Christian See to Thy Conscience (London: Felix Kyngston, 1631), 246. See also Vincent, Heaven Upon Earth, 63.
24. Bernard, Christian See to Thy Conscience, 246. See Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 163-67.
25. Samuel Annesley, “How May We Be Universally and Exactly Conscientious?” in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689 (1661; reprint, Wheaton: Richard Owen Roberts, 1981), 1:14.
26. Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.24. Cf. Foxgrover, “Calvin’s Understanding of Conscience”; Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1999), 59-63, 84-87.
27. Annesley, “How May We Be Universally and Exactly Conscientious?” in Puritan Sermons, 1:13.
28. Annesley, “How May We Be Universally and Exactly Conscientious?” in Puritan Sermons, 1:8-9.
29. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 70.
30. The Workes of that Famous and VVorthy Minister of Christ in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins (London: John Legatt, 1612), 1:550.
31. Packer, Quest for Godliness, 48.
32. Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1994), 380.
33. Baxter, Works, 2:336. See Swinnock, Works, 5:64.
34. Vincent, Heaven on Earth, 277.
35. Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 1:534.
36. Perkins, Works, 1:547. See Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, 1:525; Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 134; and also Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance, 131-42, 259-62.
37. Thomas Watson, Heaven Taken by Storm, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Soli Deo Gloria, 1992), 30.
38. Thomas Watson, The Ten Commandments (1692; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 230-36.
39. The word “casuistry” is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable like “casual,” thus KA-zhoo-iss-tree.
40. Elliott Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans Under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 71.
41. Thomas C. Merrill, ed., William Perkins, 1558–1602: English Puritanist—His Pioneer Works on Casuistry: “A Discourse of Conscience” and “The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience” (Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1966), x.
42. On the Reformation roots of Puritan practical divinity, see Norman Keith Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity in English Puritanism During the Seventeenth Century: Its Origins, Development and Significance” (PhD dissertation, University of London, 1957), 1-3, 41-98, 314-18; Ian Breward, “The Life and Thought of William Perkins” (PhD dissertation, University of Manchester, 1963), 236-77; Martin Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, trans. Peter Beale (German 1538; English trans. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2.4.12; Jules Bonnet, ed., Letters of John Calvin, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1858); John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, ed. Elsie A. McKee (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 291-332.
43. Secondary-source studies on Puritan casuistry include William Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852); H. Hensley Henson, Studies in English Religion in the Seventeenth Century (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1903); Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (1927; reprint, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999); Louis B. Wright, “William Perkins: Elizabethan Apostle of Practical Divinity,” Huntington Library Quarterly 3 (1940):171-96; John T. McNeill, “Casuistry in the Puritan Age,” Religion in Life 12, 1 (Winter, 1942-43):76-89; H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London: Longman’s Green and Co., 1949); Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century, With Special Reference to Jeremy Taylor (London: S.P.C.K., 1952); George L. Mosse, “Puritan Political Thought and the ‘Cases of Conscience,’” Church History 23 (1954):109-18; idem, “The Assimilation of Machiavelli in English Thought: The Casuistry of William Perkins and William Ames,” Huntington Library Quarterly 17, no. 4 (1954):315-26; Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity in English Puritanism During the Seventeenth Century”); George L. Mosse, The Holy Pretence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957); Breward, “The Life and Thought of William Perkins”; Rose, Cases of Conscience; P. H. Lewis, “The Puritan Casuistry of Prayer—Some Cases of Conscience Resolved,” in The Good Fight of Faith, Westminster Conference papers, 1971 (London: Evangelical Press, 1972), 5-22; Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (1975; reprint, Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria, 2009), 63-136; Daniel Webber, “The Puritan Pastor as Counsellor,” in The Office and Work of the Minister, Westminster Conference papers, 1986 (London: Westminster Conference, 1987), 77-95; Timothy Keller, “Puritan Resources for Biblical Counseling,” Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1988):11-44, http://www.ccef.org/puritan-resources-biblical-counseling (accessed June 25, 2011); Margaret Sampson, “Laxity and Liberty in seventeenth-Century English Political Thought,” in Edmund Leites, ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: University Press, 1988), 159-84; James I. Packer, “The Puritan Conscience,” in A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1990), 107-122; Michael Schuldiner, Gifts and Works: The Post-Conversion Paradigm and Spiritual Controversy in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1991); Keith Thomas, “Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England,” in John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf, eds., Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 29-56; Ken Sarles, “The English Puritans: A Historical Paradigm of Biblical Counseling,” in Introduction to Biblical Counseling: A Basic Guide to the Principles and Practice of Counseling, John F. MacArthur, Jr., Wayne A. Mack, et al. (Dallas: Word, 1994), 21-43; Edward G. Andrew, Conscience and Its Critics: Protestant Conscience, Enlightenment Reason, and Modern Subjectivity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion & Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 121-44; Gary Brady, “A Study of Ideas of the Conscience in Puritan Writings, 1590-1640” (ThM thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2006). Of these sources, I am most indebted to Breward’s and Clifford’s dissertations and Packer’s article, upon which I have leaned heavily. 
44. For examples of cases of conscience, see Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 4-7.
45. Ibid., 7.
46. Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain, ed. J. S. Brewer, 3rd ed. (1648; reprint, London: William Tegg, 1845), 5:192-93.
47. Rylands English Manuscript 524, republished in ‘Practical Divinity’: The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham, ed. Kenneth L. Parker and Eric J. Carlson (Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998), 129-259. (Originally published in 1599, five years after Greenham’s death, in his Works.) Cf. Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain, 71.
48. Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 9.
49. The full title is Seven Treatises, Containing Such Direction as Is Gathered Out of Holie Scripture, Leading and Guiding to True Happiness, Both in this Life, and in the Life to Come: and May Be Called the Practise of Christianitie: Profitable for Such as Desire the Same: in which more Particularly True Christians Learne How to Lead a Godly and Comfortable Life Every Day (London: Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1604). This book was reprinted five times in the seventeenth century, but never since.
50. Stephen Egerton, unpaginated preface to Seven Treatises.
51. Rogers, Seven Treatises, passim.
52. William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 36. Two other pioneers in Puritan practical divinity were Arthur Dent (1553-1607), rector of South Shoebury, Essex, and author of The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, and Henry Smith (1560-1591), who was called the “silver-tongued preacher” of his generation.
53. Merrill, ed., William Perkins, 1558–1602: English Puritanist—His Pioneer Works on Casuistry, xx.
54. Samuel Clarke, The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 3rd ed. (London, 1675), 416-17.
55. Republished in Merrill, ed., William Perkins, 1558–1602: English Puritanist—His Pioneer Works on Casuistry.
56. Mosse, The Holy Pretence, 49.
57. Breward, “Life and Theology of Perkins,” 235.
58. Merrill, ed., William Perkins, 1558–1602: English Puritanist—His Pioneer Works on Casuistry, 101.
59. Merrill, ed., William Perkins, 1558–1602, xx.
60. H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (London: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 260. Cf. Ian Breward, “William Perkins and the Origins of Puritan Casuistry,” in Faith and a Good Conscience, Puritan conference papers, 1962 (1963; Stoke-on-Trent, U.K.: Tentmaker, n.d.), 14-17. For the views of Perkins and Ames on liberty of conscience, see L. John Van Til, Liberty of Conscience, The History of a Puritan Idea (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1972), 11-25, 43-51. For a negative assessment of Perkins’s treatises on conscience, see Rose, Cases of Conscience, 187-94.
61. Samuel Clarke, A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines (London, 1662), 114.
62. Thomas Fuller, Abel Redevivus (1651; reprint, London: William Tegg, 1867), 593.
63. Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of Richard Baxter (London: James Duncan, 1830), 5:587.
64. Robert Bolton, Instructions for Comforting Afflicted Consciences (1626; reprint, Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991). On Bolton’s effectiveness as a pastor and evangelist, see Edward Bagshawe, The Life and Death of Mr. Bolton (London, 1635), 19-20.
65. Robert Bolton, General Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God (1626; reprint, Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995).
66. J. I. Packer, ”Robert Bolton,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, ed. Gary Cohen (Marshallton, Del.: The National Foundation for Christian Education, 1968), 2:131.
67. William Ames, Conscience With the Power and Cases Thereof (1639; reprint, Norwood, N.J.: Walter J. Johnson, 1975), 1.1. For a basic introduction to Ames and his most famous work, see Joel R. Beeke and Jan Van Vliet, “The Marrow of Theology by William Ames (1576-1633),” in The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004), 52-65. For more on Ames as a Puritan casuist, see Mosse, The Holy Pretence, 68-87.
68. Samuel Eliot Morison, “Those Misunderstood Puritans,” http://www.revisionisthistory.org/puritan1.html (accessed August 4, 2011).
69. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. John D. Eusden (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1968), 70.
70. Baxter, Works, 2:viii.
71. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 175-206.
72. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 209, 210.
73. Fenner, The Souls Looking-Glasse, 196-99.
74. A Directory for the Publique Worship of God (London, 1651), 76. For an example of such an examination, see M. H. Lee, The Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1887), 36.
75. Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 28.
76. David Dickson’s Therapeutica Sacra was first published in English in 1664, and last reprinted in Select Practical Writings of David Dickson, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Printed for the Assembly’s Committee, 1845). The English subtitle was The Method of Healing the Diseases of the Conscience Concerning Regeneration. On Dickson’s use of the covenant as a scheme for casuistry, see Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 27-28. Other relevant works of this period include William Twisse, Doubting Conscience Resolved (1652), John Dury, A Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian commonwealth (1654); Samuel Hartlib, The Earnest Breathings of Foreign Protestants, Divines, and others (1658). On Dury and Hartlib’s efforts to build an international unity among Reformed divines through practical divinity, see Gunnar Westin, Negotiations about Church Unity, 1628-1634 (Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska, 1932); Karl Brauer, Die Unionstdtigkeit John Duries unter dem Protektorat Cromwells (Marburg, 1907).
77. Keller, “Puritan Resources for Biblical Counseling,” 3.
78. Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 33-34; Samuel Clarke, “Autobiography,” in his Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age (London, 1683), 3-11.
79. Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689 (Wheaton, Ill.: Richard Owen Roberts, 1981). This is a six-volume reprint, but volume 5 is a compilation of Puritan systematic theology and volume 6 is a polemical volume countering Roman Catholicism (see Beeke and Pederson, Meet the Puritans, 637-39).
80. There are scores of additional Puritan books of casuistry that we don’t have space to enlarge upon here. For example, there are Thomas Fuller, The Cause and Cvre of a VVovnded Conscience (London: G. D. for John Williams, 1649); James Durham, Heaven upon Earth in the Sure Tranquility and Quiet Composure of a Good Conscience; Sprinkled with the Blood of Jesus, ed. John Carstairs (Edinburgh: A. Anderson, 1685). Consider also Joseph Alleine’s (1634-1668) Cases Satisfactorily Resolved (1672) and Nathanael Vincent’s Heaven upon Earth: or, a Discourse Concerning Conscience (1676).
81. See especially the application sections in Edwards’s sermons.
82. Isaac Watts, An Humble Attempt toward the Revival of Practical Religion among Christians (London, 1731).
83. Clifford, “Casuistical Divinity,” 40.
84. Sibbes, Works, 3:223.
85. Vincent, Heaven on Earth, 306.