Therapeutica Sacra

In Blaise Pascal's Provincial Letters he took the Jesuits to task for their casuistic morality and thereby lent a pejorative sense to casuistry, but while Jesuits abused questions of conscience for their own purposes, Puritans however were rightly called "physicians of the soul" and their casuistry is aptly known as "practical divinity." Some great works of Puritan casuistry have been handed down to us: for example, William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience; William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof; and Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory.

Another is Therapeutica Sacra: Shewing briefly the method of healing the diseases of the Conscience, concerning Regeneration by Scottish Covenanter David Dickson. First published in Latin in 1656, Dickson translated it himself and it was published again in English posthumously by his son Alexander Dickson in 1664. So far as I know, the work has not been reprinted in two or three centuries, but it is a massive and eminently useful work by a gifted Scottish divine. Several chapters have been available online for some time, but recently the work has become available online in full at Google Books (2nd English ed., 1697) and in a much cleaner, scanned edition at the Free Church of Scotland College website. Dickson's focus is on God's dealings with his Elect, and this work likewise influenced in particular Edward Taylor's famous poem God's Determinations Touching His Elect. In the words of David Lachman, Dickson's "Therapeutic Sacra was one of the most important Scottish theological works of the 17th century."