Here also lies the characteristic difference from all feudal viewpoints. For the latter only the descendants of the parvenu (political or social) can reap the benefit of his success in a recognized station (characteristically expressed in the Spanish Hidalgo = hijo d’algo = filius de aliquo where the aliquid means an inherited property) However rapidly these differences are today fading out in the rapid change and Europeanization of the American national character, nevertheless the precisely opposite bourgeois attitude which glorifies business success and earnings as a symptom of mental achievement, but has no respect for mere inherited wealth, is still sometimes represented there. On the other hand, in Europe (as James Bryce once remarked) in effect almost every social honour is now purchasable for money, so long as the buyer has not himself stood behind the counter, and carries out the necessary metamorphosis of his property (formation of trusts, etc.). Against the aristocracy of blood, see for instance Thomas Adams, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 216. ↩
That was, for instance, already true of the founder of the Familist sect, Hendrik Nicklaes, who was a merchant (Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, p. 34). ↩
This is, for instance, definitely true for Hoornbeek, since Matthew 5:5 and 1 Timothy 4:8 also made purely worldly promises to the saints (Theologia practica, I, p. 193). Everything is the work of God’s Providence, but in particular He takes care of His own. Op. cit., p. 192: “Super alios autem summa cura et modis singularissimis versatur Dei providentia circa fideles.” There follows a discussion of how one can know that a stroke of luck comes not from the communis providentia, but from that special care. Bailey also (Praxis Pietatis, p. 191) explains success in worldly labours by reference to Providence. That prosperity is often the reward of a godly life is a common expression in Quaker writings (for example see such an expression as late as 1848 in Selection from the Christian Advices, issued by the General Meeting of the Society of Friends, London, sixth edition, 1851, p. 209). We shall return to the connection with the Quaker ethics. ↩
Thomas Adams’s analysis of the quarrel of Jacob and Esau may serve as an example of this attention to the patriarchs, which is equally characteristic of the Puritan view of life (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 235): “His [Esau’s] folly may be argued from the base estimation of the birthright” [the passage is also important for the development of the idea of the birthright, of which more later] “that he would so lightly pass from it and on so easy condition as a pottage.” But then it was perfidious that he would not recognize the sale, charging he had been cheated. He is, in other words, “a cunning hunter, a man of the fields”; a man of irrational, barbarous life; while Jacob, “a plain man, dwelling in tents,” represents the “man of grace.”
The sense of an inner relationship to Judaism, which is expressed even in the well-known work of Roosevelt, Köhler (Die niederländische reformirte Kirche) found widespread among the peasants in Holland. But, on the other hand, Puritanism was fully conscious of its differences from Hebrew ethics in practical affairs, as Prynne’s attack on the Jews (apropos of Cromwell’s proposals for toleration) plainly shows. See below, note 356. ↩
Zur bäuerlichen Glaubens- und Sittenlehre: Von einem thüringischen Landpfarrer, second edition, Gotha, 1890, p. 16. The peasants who are here described are characteristic products of the Lutheran Church. Again and again I wrote Lutheran in the margin when the excellent author spoke of peasant religion in general. ↩
Compare for instance the passage cited in Ritschl, Pietismus II. p. 158. Spener also bases his objections to change of calling and pursuit of gain partly on passages in Jesus Sirach. Theologische Bedenken, III, p. 426. ↩
It is true that Bailey, nevertheless, recommends reading them, and references to the Apocrypha occur now and then, though naturally not often. I can remember none to Jesus Sirach just now (though perhaps by chance). ↩
Where outward success comes to persons evidently damned, the Calvinist (as for instance Hoornbeek) comforts himself with the reflection, following the theory of stubbornness, that God allows it to them in order to harden them and make their doom the more certain. ↩
We cannot go farther into this point in this connection. We are here interested only in the formalistic character of Puritan righteousness. On the significance of Old Testament ethics for the lex naturae there is much in Troeltsch’s Soziallehren. ↩
The binding character of the ethical norms of the Scriptures goes for Baxter (Christian Directory, III, p. 173 f.) so far that they are (1) only a transcript of the law of nature, or (2) bear the “express character of universality and perpetuity.” ↩
For instance Dowden (with reference to Bunyan), Puritan and Anglican, p. 39. ↩
More on this point in the essays on the Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. The enormous influence which, for instance, the second commandment (“thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image”) has had on the development of the Jewish character, its rationality and abhorrence of sensuous culture, cannot be analysed here. However, it may perhaps be noted as characteristic that one of the leaders of the Educational Alliance in the United States, an organization which carries on the Americanization of Jewish
