Christopher St German: religion, conscience and law in Reformation England

This chapter reassesses Christopher St German's "Doctor and Student". After setting out St German's life, religious beliefs and theory of equity, it argues that we should see the work principally as a work directed to religious concerns. St German's concerns were principally spiritual. His discussion of human law and human courts was directed to showing that knowledge of this human law was required for confessors and individuals seeking to avoid sin. His concern was with individual conscience, rather than the institutional conscience of the Chancery