casuist

• He was at once too much and too little of a casuist,—too habituated to fine distinctions and too unaware of the pitfalls they often present to others,—to understand that in condemning his lovers for wanting the energy to commit a crime he could be supposed to imply approval of the crime they failed to commit. —  Robert Browning
• He is always the casuist, always mentally impartial in the face of a moral problem, reserving judgment on matters which, after all, seem to him remote from an unimpassioned contemplation of things; until that moment of crisis comes, long after he has become a clergyman, when the death of his wife changed the world for him, and he became, in the words of Walton, 'crucified to the world, and all those vanities, those imaginary pleasures, that are daily acted on that restless stage; and they were as perfectly crucified to him.' —  Figures of Several Centuries
• This was the invention of some casuist, and not very compatible with that strict sincerity, and that scrupulous conscience, of which Cranmer made profession. —  The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. From Henry VII. to Mary
• I am not a casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, I believe I have found a new sin You?" —  Là-bas
• Has any one so told the truth concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of France? —  Promenades of an Impressionist

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