The commandment of silence has been, starting from the Biblical threat of punishment for every useless word, especially since the Cluny monks, a favourite ascetic means of education in self-control. Baxter also speaks in detail of the sinfulness of unnecessary words. Its place in his character has been pointed out by Sanford, Studies and Reflections of the Great Rebellion, pp. 90 ff.
What contemporaries felt as the deep melancholy and moroseness of the Puritans was the result of breaking down the spontaneity of the status naturalis, and the condemnation of thoughtless speech was in the service of this end. When Washington Irving (Bracebridge Hall, chap. XXX) seeks the reason for it partly in the calculating spirit of capitalism and partly in the effect of political freedom, which promotes a sense of responsibility, it may be remarked that it does not apply to the Latin peoples. For England the situation was probably that: (1) Puritanism enabled its adherents to create free institutions and still become a world power; and (2) it transformed that calculating spirit (what Sombart calls Rechenhaftigkeit), which is in truth essential to capitalism, from a mere means to economy into a principle of general conduct. ↩
Baxter, Christian Directory, I, p. 111. ↩
Baxter, Christian Directory, I, p. 383 f. ↩
Similarly on the preciousness of time, see Barclay, Apology for the True Christian Divinity, p. 14. ↩
Baxter, Saints’ Everlasting Rest, I, p. 79. “Keep up a high esteem of time and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold and silver. And if vain recreation, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time accordingly heighten your watchfulness.” “Those that are prodigal of their time despise their own souls,” says Matthew Henry (Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 315). Here also Protestant asceticism follows a well-beaten track. We are accustomed to think it characteristic of the modern man that he has no time, and for instance, like Goethe in the Wanderjahren, to measure the degree of capitalistic development by the fact that the clocks strike every quarter-hour. So also Sombart in his Kapitalismus. We ought not, however, to forget that the first people to live (in the Middle Ages) with careful measurement of time were the monks, and that the church bells were meant above all to meet their needs. ↩
Compare Baxter’s discussion of the calling, Saints’ Everlasting Rest, I, pp. 108 H. Especially the following passage: “Question: But may I not cast off the world that I may only think of my salvation? Answer: You may cast off all such excess of worldly cares or business as unnecessarily hinder you in spiritual things. But you may not cast off all bodily employment and mental labour in which you may serve the common good. Everyone as a member of Church or Commonwealth must employ their parts to the utmost for the good of the Church and the Commonwealth. To neglect this and say: I will pray and meditate, is as if your servant should refuse his greatest work and tie himself to some lesser, easier part. And God hath commanded you some way or other to labour for your daily bread and not to live as drones of the sweat of others only.” God’s commandment to Adam, “In the sweat of thy brow,” and Paul’s declaration, “He who will not work shall not eat,” are also quoted. It has always been known of the Quakers that even the most well-to-do of them have had their sons learn a calling, for ethical and not, as Alberti recommends, for utilitarian reasons. ↩
Here are points where Pietism, on account of its emotional character, takes a different view. Spener, although he emphasizes in characteristic Lutheran fashion that labour in a calling is worship of God (Theologische Bedenken, III, p. 445), nevertheless holds that the restlessness of business affairs distracts one from God, a most characteristic difference from Puritanism. ↩
Baxter, Christian Directory, I, p. 242. “It’s they that are lazy in their callings that can find no time for holy duties.” Hence the idea that the cities, the seat of the middle class with its rational business activities, are the seats of ascetic virtue. Thus Baxter says of his hand-loom weavers in Kidderminster: “And their constant converse and traffic with London doth much to promote civility and piety among tradesmen …” in his autobiography (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 38). That the proximity of the capital should promote virtue would astonish modern clergymen, at least in Germany. But Pietism also inclined to similar views. Thus Spener, speaking of a young colleague, writes: “At least it appears that among the great multitudes in the cities, though the majority is quite depraved, there are nevertheless a number of good people who can accomplish much, while in villages often hardly anything good can be found in a whole community” (Theologische Bedenken, I, 66, p. 303). In other words, the peasant is little suited to rational ascetic conduct. Its ethical glorification is very modern. We cannot here enter into the significance of this and similar statements for the question of the relation of asceticism to social classes. ↩
Take, for instance, the following passages (Baxter, Christian Directory, I, p. 336 f.):
