Hence (Baxter, Christian Directory, I, p. 380) its symptoms are carefully analysed. Sloth and idleness are such deadly sins because they have a cumulative character. They are even regarded by Baxter as “destroyers of grace” (op. cit., I, pp. 279–80). That is, they are the antitheses of the methodical life. ↩
Baxter, Saints’ Everlasting Rest, I, pp. 108 ff. Especially striking are the following passages: “Question: But will not wealth excuse us? Answer: It may excuse you from some sordid sort of work by making you more serviceable to another, but you are no more excused from service of work … than the poorest man.” Also, p. 376: “Though they [the rich] have no outward want to urge them, they have as great a necessity to obey God … God hath strictly commanded it [labour] to all.” [See note 152.] ↩
Similarly Spener (Theologische Bedenken, III, pp. 338, 425), who for this reason opposes the tendency to early retirement as morally objectionable, and, in refuting an objection to the taking of interest, that the enjoyment of interest leads to laziness, emphasizes that anyone who was in a position to live upon interest would still be obligated to work by God’s commandment. ↩
Including Pietism. Whenever a question of change of calling arises, Spener takes the attitude that after a certain calling has once been entered upon, it is a duty of obedience to Providence to remain and acquiesce in it. ↩
The tremendous force, dominating the whole of conduct, with which the Indian religious teaching sanctions economic traditionalism in terms of chances of favourable rebirth, I have shown in the essays on the Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. It is an excellent example by which to show the difference between mere ethical theories and the creation of psychological sanctions with a religious background for certain types of conduct. The pious Hindu could advance in the scale of transmigration only by the strictly traditional fulfilment of the duties of the caste of his birth. It was the strongest conceivable religious basis for traditionalism. In fact, the Indian ethic is in this respect the most completely consistent antithesis of the Puritan, as in another respect (traditionalism of the caste structure) it is opposed to the Hebrew. ↩
Baxter, Saints’ Everlasting Rest, I, p. 377. ↩
But this does not mean that the Puritan viewpoint was historically derived from the latter. On the contrary, it is an expression of the genuinely Calvinistic idea that the cosmos of the world serves the glory of God. The utilitarian turn, that the economic cosmos should serve the good of the many, the common good, etc., was a consequence of the idea that any other interpretation of it would lead to aristocratic idolatry of the flesh, or at least did not serve the glory of God, but only fleshly cultural ends. But God’s will, as it is expressed (note 139) in the purposeful arrangements of the economic cosmos, can, so far as secular ends are in question at all, only be embodied in the good of the community, in impersonal usefulness. Utilitarianism is thus, as has already been pointed out, the result of the impersonal character of brotherly love and the repudiation of all glorification of this world by the exclusiveness of the Puritan in majorem Dei gloriam.
How completely this idea, that all idolatry of the flesh is inconsistent with the glory of God and hence unconditionally bad, dominated ascetic Protestantism is clearly shown by the doubts and hesitation which it cost even Spener, who certainly was not infected with democracy, to maintain the use of titles as ἀδιάφορον against numerous objections. He finally comforted himself with the reflection that even in the Bible the Praetor Festus was given the title of κράτιστος by the Apostles. The political side of the question does not arise in this connection. ↩
“The inconstant man is a stranger in his own house,” says Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 77). ↩
On this, see especially George Fox’s remarks in the Friends’ Library (ed. W. & T. Evans, Philadelphia, 1837), I, p. 130. ↩
Above all, this sort of religious ethic cannot be regarded as a reflex of economic conditions. The specialization of occupations had, if anything, gone further in medieval Italy than in the England of that period. ↩
For, as is often pointed out in the Puritan literature, God never commanded “love thy neighbour more than thyself,” but only as thyself. Hence self-regard is also a duty. For instance, a man who can make better use of his possessions, to the greater glory of God, than his neighbour, is not obliged by the duty of brotherly love to part with them. ↩
Spener is also close to this viewpoint. But even in the case of transfer from commercial occupations (regarded as especially dangerous to virtue) to theology, he remains hesitant and on the whole opposed to it (Theologische Bedenken, III, pp. 435, 443; I, p. 524). The frequent occurrence of the reply to just this question (of the permissibility of changing a calling) in Spener’s naturally biased opinion shows, incidentally, how eminently practical the different ways of interpreting 1 Corinthians 7 were. ↩
Such ideas are not to be found, at least in the writings, of the leading Continental Pietists.
