These manuals follow a common pattern, taking up individual cases and
indicating how they are to be resolved, and the directions they offer are remarkably similar in
character.53 The greater number
of cases discussed deal with moral perplexities — questions involving family life, economic activity, military service, political
issues, the relationship
of master and servant, the right use
of recreation — but spiritual perplexities — involving «the great case which the Jews put to Peter and the jailer to Paul and Silas «54 undoubtedly received equal attention in actual pastoral work.