Similarly the most consistent doctrine held that baptism was required by positive ordinance, but was not necessary to salvation. For that reason the strictly Puritan Scotch and English Independents were able to maintain the principle that children of obvious reprobates should not be baptized (for instance, children of drunkards). An adult who desired to be baptized, but was not yet ripe for the communion, the Synod of Edam of 1586 (Art. 32, 1) recommended should be baptized only if his conduct were blameless, and he should have placed his desires sonder superstitie. ↩
This negative attitude toward all sensuous culture is, as Dowden, Puritan and Anglican, shows, a very fundamental element of Puritanism. ↩
The expression individualism includes the most heterogeneous things imaginable. What is here understood by it will, I hope, be clear from the following discussion. In another sense of the word, Lutheranism has been called individualistic, because it does not attempt any ascetic regulation of life. In yet another quite different sense the word is used, for example, by Dietrich Schafer when in his study, “Zur Beurteilung des Wormser Konkordats,” Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie (1905), he calls the Middle Ages the era of pronounced individuality because, for the events relevant for the historian, irrational factors then had a significance which they do not possess today. He is right, but so perhaps are also those whom he attacks in his remarks, for they mean something quite different, when they speak of individuality and individualism. Jacob Burchhardt’s brilliant ideas are today at least partly out of date, and a thorough analysis of these concepts in historical terms would at the present time be highly valuable to science. Quite the opposite is, of course, true when the play impulse causes certain historians to define the concept in such a way as to enable them to use it as a label for any epoch of history they please. ↩
And in a similar, though naturally less sharp, contrast to the later Catholic doctrine. The deep pessimism of Pascal, which also rests on the doctrine of predestination, is, on the other hand, of Jansenist origin, and the resulting individualism of renunciation by no means agrees with the official Catholic position. See the study by Honigsheim on the French Jansenists, referred to in note 83. ↩
The same holds for the Jansenists. ↩
Bailey, Praxis pietatis (German edition, Leipzig, 1724), p. 187. Also P. J. Spener in his Theologische Bedenken (according to third edition, Halle, 1712) adopts a similar standpoint. A friend seldom gives advice for the glory of God, but generally for mundane (though not necessarily egotistical) reasons. “He [the knowing man] is blind in no man’s cause, but best sighted in his own. He confines himself to the circle of his own affairs and thrusts not his fingers into needless fires. He sees the falseness of it [the world] and therefore learns to trust himself ever, others so far as not to be damaged by their disappointment,” is the philosophy of Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 11). Baily (Praxis pietatis, p. 176) further recommends every morning before going out among people to imagine oneself going into a wild forest full of dangers, and to pray God for the “cloak of foresight and righteousness.” This feeling is characteristic of all the ascetic denominations without exception, and in the case of many Pietists led directly to a sort of hermit’s life within the world. Even Spangenburg in the (Moravian) Idea fides fratum, p. 382, calls attention with emphasis to Jeremiah 17:5: “Cursed is the man who trusteth in man.” To grasp the peculiar misanthropy of this attitude, note also Hoornbeek’s remarks (Theologia practica, I, p. 882) on the duty to love one’s enemy: “Denique hoc magis nos ulicisimur, quo proximum, inultium nobis, tradimus ultori Deo—Quo quis plus se ulscitur, eo minus id pro ispo agis Deus.” It is the same transfer of vengeance that is found in the parts of the Old Testament written after the exile; a subtle intensification and refinement of the spirit of revenge compared to the older “eye for an eye.” On brotherly love, see below, note 139. ↩
Of course the confessional did not have only that effect. The explanations, for instance, of Muthmann, Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie, I, Heft 2, p. 65, are too simple for such a highly complex psychological problem as the confessional. ↩
This is a fact which is of especial importance for the interpretation of the psychological basis of Calvinistic social organizations. They all rest on spiritually individualistic, rational motives. The individual never enters emotionally into them. The glory of God and one’s own salvation always remain above the threshold of consciousness. This accounts for certain characteristic features of the social organization of peoples with a Puritan past even today. ↩
The fundamentally anti-authoritarian tendency of the doctrine, which at bottom undermined every responsibility for ethical conduct or spiritual salvation on the part of Church or State as useless, led again and again to its proscription, as, for instance, led by States General of the Netherlands. The result was always the formation of conventicles (as after 1614). ↩
On Bunyan compare the biography of Froude in the English Men of Letters series, also Macaulay’s superficial
