As far as Talmudic Judaism is concerned, some fundamental traits of Puritan morality are certainly related to it. For instance, it is stated in the Talmud (in Wünsche, Babyl. Talmud, II, p. 34) that it is better and will be more richly rewarded by God if one does a good deed for duty’s sake than one which is not commanded by the law. In other words, loveless fulfillment of duty stands higher ethically than sentimental philanthropy. The Puritan ethics would accept that in essentials. Kant in effect also comes close to it, being partly of Scotch ancestry and strongly influenced by Pietism in his bringing up. Though we cannot discuss the subject here, many of his formulations are closely related to ideas of ascetic Protestantism. But nevertheless the Talmudic ethic is deeply saturated with Oriental traditionalism. “R. Tanchum said to Ben Chanilai, ‘Never alter a custom’ ” (Gemara to Mischna. VII, I, 86b, No. 93, in Wünsche. It is a question of the standard of living of day labourers). The only exception to this conformity is relation to strangers.
Moreover, the Puritan conception of lawfulness as proof evidently provided a much stronger motive to positive action than the Jewish unquestioned fulfillment of all commandments. The idea that success reveals the blessing of God is of course not unknown to Judaism. But the fundamental difference in religious and ethical significance which it took on for Judaism on account of the double ethic prevented the appearance of similar results at just the most important point. Acts toward a stranger were allowed which were forbidden toward a brother. For that reason alone it was impossible for success in this field of what was not commanded but only allowed to be a sign of religious worth and a motive to methodical conduct in the way in which it was for the Puritan. On this whole problem, which Sombart, in his book Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, has often dealt with incorrectly, see the essays referred to above. The details have no place here.
The Jewish ethics, however strange that may at first sound, remained very strongly traditionalistic. We can likewise not enter into the tremendous change which the inner attitude toward the world underwent with the Christian form of the ideas of grace and salvation which contained in a peculiar way the seeds of new possibilities of development. On Old Testament lawfulness compare for example Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, II, p. 265.
To the English Puritans, the Jews of their time were representatives of that type of capitalism which was involved in war, Government contracts, State monopolies, speculative promotions, and the construction and financial projects of princes, which they themselves condemned. In fact the difference may, in general, with the necessary qualifications, be formulated: that Jewish capitalism was speculative pariah-capitalism, while the Puritan was bourgeois organization of labour. ↩
The truth of the Holy Scriptures follows for Baxter in the last analysis from the “wonderful difference of the godly and ungodly,” the absolute difference of the renewed man from others, and God’s evident quite special care for His chosen people (which may of course be expressed in temptations), Christian Directory, I, p. 165. ↩
As a characterization of this, it is only necessary to read how tortuously even Bunyan, who still occasionally approaches the atmosphere of Luther’s Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (for example in “Of the Law and a Christian,” Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 254), reconciles himself with the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (see the sermon “The Pharisee and the Publican,” op. cit., p. 100). Why is the Pharisee condemned? He does not truly keep God’s commandments, for he is evidently a sectarian who is only concerned with external details and ceremonies (p. 107), but above all because he ascribes merit to himself, and at the same time, like the Quakers, thanks God for virtue by misuse of His name. In a sinful manner he exalts this virtue (p. 126), and thus implicitly contests God’s predestination (p. 139). His prayer is thus idolatry of the flesh, and that is the reason it is sinful. On the other hand, the publican is, as the honesty of his confession shows, spiritually reborn, for, as it is put with a characteristic Puritan mitigation of the Lutheran sense of sin, “to a right and sincere conviction of sin there must be a conviction of the probability of mercy” (p. 209). ↩
Printed in Gardiner’s Constitutional Documents. One may compare this struggle against anti-authoritarian asceticism with Louis XIV’s persecution of Port Royal and the Jansenists. ↩
Calvin’s own standpoint was in this respect distinctly less drastic, at least in so far as the finer aristocratic forms of the enjoyment of life were concerned. The only limitation is the Bible. Whoever adheres to it and has a good conscience, need not observe his every impulse to enjoy life with anxiety. The discussion in Chapter X of the Institutio Christianae (for instance, “nec fugere ea quoque possumus quae videntur oblectatione magis quam necessitate inservire”) might in itself have opened the way to a very lax practice. Along with increasing anxiety over the certitudo salutis the most important circumstance for the later disciples was, however, as we shall point out in another place, that in the era of the ecclesia militans it was the small bourgeoisie who were the principal representatives of Calvinistic ethics. ↩
