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Meg Lota Brown and Camille Slights have considered how metaphysical poetry relates to that form of Stuart ethical discussion known as case casuistry, where individual situations are considered in detail against a moral law by a well-meaning and well-instructed judge. Early modern theologians habitually see the conscience acting as a syllogism. This chapter considers the features of the conscience operating this syllogism, including its self-reflexive qualities, its effect on the self's agency, its role as spy and recorder, and where the law it refers to is consulted. The three principal faults of the conscience (erring, seared, and blind) are explained from the point of view of Protestant Ramist casuistry rather than that of contemporary Catholic treatises. Judgement should be a practical method of mediating between human perceptions and divine attributes. The latter are a central subject of debate among theologians such as Thomas Jackson and William Ames. Describing as litotes what would be seen as hyperbole if it were not about God is one method poets and theologians alike use for this impossible task. The chapter suggests the five tropes which the book concentrates on provide other means of speaking with God.

The doctrine of the Trinity provides Edwards with ecclesiological categories that allow for dynamism alongside ordered design, for within the life of the Godhead, both freedom and predictability are witnessed. The church is not merely a provisional instrument used by God within time and space to achieve his purposes, but more substantially, the church is also necessary to the life of God, for the Father gives the gift of the church to his Son to be his bride forever. It is the Holy Spirit whose chief work is to bring union within the Godhead, between the natures of the Son, and for the sake of the elect with Christ, who secures the gift. Simultaneously, Edwards downgrades the importance of covenant as the chief coordinating category in Reformed ecclesiological thought.

This section deals with New England debates concerning ecclesiology in the seventeenth century. Drawing on the taxonomy of Janice Knight, it is shown that there were at least two parties among New World Puritans, one taking its lead from Sibbes and the other from Ames. Though the Sibbesians were the dominant grouping in England, in the colonies, it was the Amesians who were in the majority. Using the Aristotelian language of causation, these colonial debates are investigated under the headings of God’s relationship to the creation, the means of grace in the church, and the eschatological future of the world. The life of the Trinity is connected to these categories.

The Founding of Harvard was a first order of business in Puritan Massachusetts. The Puritans had inherited not only the university tradition from Christendom, but also a strong emphasis, as part of their heritage from John Calvin, on educated clergy and educated lay leadership. Harvard College was designed to serve both church and state. It adopted the standard classic university curriculum, supplemented by theological training and Christian worship. William Ames, who had hoped to come to Massachusetts, proposed alternatives that would have better integrated theology with more secular learning, such as treating both metaphysics and ethics as subdisciplines of theology in the arts curriculum and removing Aristotle from these parts of the curriculum while retaining Plato.