‘Whether ’tis lawful for a man to beat his wife’: Casuistical Exercises in Late-Stuart and Early-Hanoverian England

In this essay I explore the peculiarities of Reformed Casuistry in England. While Catholic casuistical works (Luther’s summa diabolica) were primarily written to help priests conduct their duties in the confessional box by providing supposedly arbitrary decisions suitable for a wide range of different cases, in the English Protestant tradition every believer was his own casuist, and everyone was encouraged to consider his (or her) own case of conscience as unique. The minister’s role was to guide, not judge. Reformed casuistry was therefore more therapeutic than authoritarian in spirit.