ABSTRACT
In the post-Reformation climate, clashes over religious doctrine and dogma, rituals and symbols, conscience and toleration resulted in obligations of obedience being tightly formulated and strictly imposed. Conceptually and doctrinally, obligations, and practices of obedience and supervision of belief, continued to dominate the core of everyday official and private engagements. There can be little doubt that the language and significance of debt are especially potent articulations of obligations and that these would have resonated among the congregation of St Paul’s. The language of debt, common to law, religion, and economy combine to secure the binding force of obligations operating on the minds, bodies, and the souls of the people. Obligations Viscount Stair termed “obediential” since they are “not by his own consent or engagement, nor by the will of man, but by the will of God”. Learning and practising the virtues, and the constant fulfilment of obligations, were assumptions within which people existed and their social and moral well-being developed.
