52. See, for instance, Beza {De prcedestinat doct. ex preelect. in Rom 9a, Raph. Eglino exc. 1584), p. 133: "Sicut ex operibus vere bonis ad sanctificationis donum, a sanctificatione ad fidem — ascendi- mus: ita ex certis illis effectis non quamvis vocationem, sed efficacem illam et ex hac vocatione electionem et ex electione donum prae- destinationis in Christo tarn firmam quam immotus est Dei thronus certissima connexione effectorum et causarum colligimus...," Only with regard to the signs of damnation is it necessary to be careful, since it is a matter of final judgment. On this point the Puritans first differed. See further the thorough discussion of Schneckenburger, op. cit., who to be sure only cites a limited category of literature. In the whole Puritan literature this aspect comes out. "It will not be said, did you believe? — but: were you Doers or Talkers only?" says Bunyan. According to Baxter {The Saints' Everlasting Rest, chap, xii), 230 Notes Notes who teaches the mildest form of predestination, faith means sub- jection to Christ in heart and in deed, "Do what you are able first, and then complain of God for denying you grace if you have cause", was his answer to the objection that the will was not free and God alone was able to insure salvation {Works of the Puritan Divines, IV, p. 155). The investigation of Fuller (the Church historian) was limited to the one question of practical proof and the indications of his state of grace in his conduct. The same with Howe in the passage referred to elsewhere. Any examination of the Works of the Puritan Divines gives ample proofs.
Not seldom the conversion to Puritanism was due to Catholic ascetic writings, thus, with Baxter, a Jesuit tract. These conceptions were not wholly new compared with Calvin's own doctrine {Instit. Christ, chap, i, original edition of 1536, pp. 97, 113). Only for Calvin himself the certainty of salvation could not be attained in this manner (p. 147). Generally one referred to i John iii. 5 and similar passages. The demand for fides efficax is not — to anticipate — limited to the Calvinists. Baptist confessions of faith deal, in the article on pre- destination, similarly with the fruits of faith ("and that its — of re- generation— proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance and faith and newness of life" — Article 7 of the Confession printed in the Baptist Church Manual by J. N. Brown, D.D., Philadelphia, Am. Bapt. Pub. Soc). In the same way the tract (under Alennonite influence), Oliif-Tacxken, which the Harlem Synod adopted in 1649, begins on page i with the question of how the children of God are to be known, and answers (p. 10): "Nu al is't dat dasdanigh vruchtbare ghe- love alleene zii het seker fondamentale kennteeken — om de conscientien der gelovigen in het nieuwe verbondt der genade Gods te versekeren."
53. Of the significance of this for the material content of social ethics some hint has been given above. Here we are interested not in the content, but in the motives of moral action.
54. How this idea must have promoted the penetration of Puritan- ism with the Old Testament Hebrew spirit is evident.
55. Thus the Savoy Declaration says of the members of the ecclesia piira that they are "saints by effectual calling, visibly manifested by their profession and walking".
56. "A Principle of Goodness", Charnock in the Works nf the Puritan Divines, p. 175.
57. Conversion is, as Sedgwick puts it, an "exact copy of the decree of predestination". And whoever is chosen is also called to obedience and made capable of it, teaches Bailey. Only those whom God calls to His faith (which is expressed in their conduct) are true believers, not merely temporary believers, according to the (Baptist) Confession of Hanserd KnoUy.
58. Compare, for instance, the conclusion to Baxter's Christian Directory.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 59. Thus, for instance, Chamock, Self -Examination, p. 183, in refutation of the Catholic doctrine of dubitatio.
60. This argument recurs again and again in Hoornbeek, Theo- logia practica. For instance, I, p. 160; II, pp. 70, 72, 182.
61. For instance, the Conf. Helvet, 16, says "et improprie his [the works] salus adtribuitur".
62. With all the above compare Schneckenburger, pp. 80 ff.
63. Augustine is supposed to have said "si non es praedestinatus, fac ut praedestineris".
64. One is reminded of a saying of Goethe with essentially the same meaning: "How can a man know himself? Never by observation, but through action. Try to do your duty and you will know what is in you. And what is your duty? Your daily task."
65. For though Calvin himself held that saintliness must appear on the surface {Instit. Christ, IV, pp. i, 2, 7, 9), the dividing-line between saints and sinners must ever remain hidden from human knowledge. We must believe that where God's pure word is alive in a Church, organized and administered according to His law, some of the elect, even though we do not know them, are present.
66. The Calvinistic faith is one of the many examples in the history of religions of the relation between the logical and the psycho- logical consequences for the practical religious attitude to be derived from certain religious ideas. Fatalism is, of course, the only logical consequence of predestination. But on account of the idea of proof the psychological result was precisely the opposite. For essentially similar reasons the followers of Nietzsche claim a positive ethical significance for the idea of eternal recurrence. This case, however, is concerned with responsibility for a future life which is connected with the active individual by no conscious thread of continuity, while for the Puritan it was tua res agitur. Even Hoornbeek {Theologia practica, I, p. 159) analyses the relation between predestination and action well in the language of the times. The electi are, on account of their election, proof against fatalism because in their rejection of it they prove themselves "quos ipsa electio sollicitos reddit et diligentes officiorum". The practical interests cut off the fatalistic consequences of logic (which, however, in spite of everything occasionally did break through).
But, on the other hand, the content of ideas of a religion is, as Calvinism shows, far more important than William James {Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, p. 444 f.) is inclined to admit. The significance of the rational element in religious metaphysics is shown in classical form by the tremendous influence which especially the logical structure of the Calvinistic concept of God exercised on' life. If the God of the Puritans has influenced history as hardly another before or since, it is principally due to the attributes which the power of thought had given him. James's pragmatic valuation of the signi- ficance of religious ideas according to their influence on life is inci- 2^2 I Notes dentally a true child of the world of ideas of the Puritan home of that eminent scholar. The religious experience as such is of course irrational, like every experience. In its highest, mystical form it is even the experience Kax' i^oxv^, and, as James has w^cll shown, is distinguished by its absolute inconununicability. It has a specific character and appears as knowledge, but cannot be adequately reproduced by means of our lingual and conceptual apparatus. It is further true that every religious experience loses some of its content in the attempt of rational formulation, the further the conceptual formulation goes, the more so. That is the reason for many of the tragic conflicts of all rational theology, as the Baptist sects of the seventeenth century already knew. But that irrational element, which is by no means peculiar to religious experience, but applies (in different senses and to different degrees) lo every experience, does not prevent its being of the greatest practical importance, of what particular type the system of ideas is, that captures and moulds the immediate experience of religion in its own way. For from this source develop, in times of great influence of the Church on life and of strong interest in dogmatic considerations within it, most of those differences between the various religions in their ethical consequences which are of such great practical importance. How unbelievably intense, measured by present standards, the dog- matic interests even of the layman were, everyone knows who is familiar with the historical sources. We can find a parallel to-day only in the at bottom equally superstitious belief of the modern proletariat in what can be accomplished and proved by science.
67. Baxter, The Saints' Everlasting Rest, I, p. 6, answers to the question: "Whether to make salvation our end be not mercenary or legal? It is properly mercenary when we expect it as wages for work done...Otherwise it is only such a mercenarism as Christ commandeth...and if seeking Christ be mercenary, I desire to be so mercenary." Nevertheless, many Calvinists who are considered orthodox do not escape falling into a very crass sort of mercenariness. According to Bailey, Praxis pietatis, p. 262, alms are a means of escaping temporal punishment. Other theologians urged the damned to perform good works, since their damnation might thereby become somewhat more bearable, but the elect because God will then not only love them without cause but ob causam, which shall certainly sometime have its reward. The apologists have also made certain small concessions concerning the significance of good works for the degree of salvation (Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. loi).
68. Here also it is absolutely necessary, in order to bring out the characteristic differences, to speak in terms of ideal types, thus in a certain sense doing violence to historical reality. But without this a clear formulation would be quite impossible considering the com- plexity of the material. In how far the differences which we here draw as sharply as possible were merely relative, would have to be discussed separately. It is, of course, true that the official Catholic R 233 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism doctrine, even in the Middle Ages, itself set up the ideal of a systematic sanctification of life as a whole. But it is just as certain (i) that the normal practice of the Church, directly on account of its most effective means of discipline, the confession, promoted the unsystematic way of life discussed in the text, and further (2) that the fundamentally rigorous and cold atmosphere in which he lived and the absolute isolation of the Calvinst were utterly foreign te mediaeval lay- Catholicism.
69. The absolutely fundamental importance of this factor will, as has already once been pointed out, gradually become clear in the essays on the Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen.
70. And to a certain extent also to the Lutheran. Luther did not wish to eliminate this last vestige of sacramental magic.
"^i. Compare, for instance, Sedg%vick, Buss- und Gnadenlehre (German by Roscher, 1689). The repentant man has a fast rule to which he holds himself exactly, ordering thereby his whole life and conduct (p. 591). He lives according to the law, shrewdly, wakefully, and carefully (p. 596). Only a permanent change in the whole man can, since it is a result of predestination, cause this (p. 852). True repentance is always expressed in conduct (p. 361). The difference between only morally good work and opera spiritualia lies, as Hoorn- beek {op. cit., I, IX, chap, ii) explains, in the fact that the latter are the results of a regenerate life {op. cit., I, p. 160). A continuous progress in them is discernible which cap only be achieved by the supernatural influence of God's grace (p. 150). Salvation results from the transformation of the whole man through the grace of God (p. 190 f.). These ideas are common to all Protestantism, and are of course found in the highest ideals of Catholicism as well. But their consequences could only appear in the Puritan movements of worldly asceticism, and above all only in those cases did they have adequate psychological sanctions.
72. The latter name is, especially in Holland, derived from those who modelled their lives precisely on the example of the Bible (thus with Voet). Moreover, the name Methodists occurs occasionally among the Puritans in the seventeenth century.
,.^73. For, as the Puritan preachers emphasize (for instance Banyan in the Pharisee and the Publican, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 126), every single sin would destroy everything which might have been accumulated in the way of merit by good works in a lifetime, if, which is unthinkable, man were alone able to accomplish anything which God should necessarily recognize as meritorious, or even could live in perfection for any length of time. Thus Puritanism did not think as did Catholicism in terms of a sort of account with calcu- lation of the balance, a simile which was common even in antiquity, but of the definite alternative of grace or damnation held for a life as a whole. For suggestions of the banlt account idea see note 102 below.
Notes 74. Therein lies the distinction from the mere Legality and Civility which Bunyan has living as associates of Mr. Worldly-Wiseman in the City called Morality.
75. Chamock, Self -Examination {Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 172): "Reflection and knowledge of self is a prerogative of a rational nature." Also the footnote: "Cogito, ergo sum, is the first principle of the new philosophy."
76. This is not yet the place to discuss the relationship of the^ theology of Duns Scotus to certain ideas of ascetic Protestantism. It never gained official recognition, but was at best tolerated and at times proscribed. The later specific repugnance of the Pietists to Aristotelean philosophy was shared by Luther, in a somewhat different sense, and also by Calvin in conscious antagonism to Catholicism (cf. Instit. Christ, II, chap, xii, p. 4; IV, chap, xvii, p. 24). The "primacy of the will", as Kahl has put it, is common to all these movements.
77. Thus, for instance, the article on "Asceticism" in the Catholic Church Lexicon defines its meaning entirely in harmony with its highest historical manifestations. Similarly Seeberg in the Realenzy- klopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. For the purpose of this study we must be allowed to use the concept as we have done. That it can be defined in other ways, more broadly as well as more narrowly, and is generally so defined, I am well aware.
78. In Hudibras {ist Song, 18, 19) the Puritans are compare(P with the bare-foot Franciscans. A report of the Genoese Ambassador, Fieschi, calls Cromwell's army an assembly of monks.
79. In view of the close relationship between otherworldly monastic ' asceticism and active worldly asceticism, which I here expressly maintain, I am surprised to find Brentano {op. cit., p. 134 and else- where) citing the ascetic labour of the monks and its recommendation against me. His whole "Exkurs" against me culminates in that. But that continuity is, as anyone can see, a fundamental postulate of my whole thesis: the Reformation took rational Christian asceticism and its methodical habits out of the monasteries and placed them in the service of active life in the world. Compare the following dis- cussion, which has not been altered.
80. So in the many reports of the trials of Puritan heretics cited in Neal's History of the Puritans and Crosby's English Baptists.
81. Sanford, op. cit. (and both before and after him many others), has found the origin of the ideal of reserve in Puritanism. Compare on that ideal also the remarks of James Bryce on the American college in Vol. II of his American Commotizvealth. The ascetic principle of self-control also riiade Puritanism one of the fathers of modern military discipline. (On Maurice of Orange as a founder of modern army organization, see Roloff, Preuss. Jahrb., 1903, III, p. 255.) Crom- well's Ironsides, with cocked pistols in their hands, and approaching the enemy at a brisk trot without shooting, were not the superiors of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism the Cavaliers by virtue of their fierce passion, but, on the contrary, through their cool self-control, which enabled their leaders always to keep them well in hand. The knightly storm-attack of the Cavaliers, on the other hand, always resulted in dissolving their troops into atoms. See Firth, Cromwell's Army.
82. See especially Windelband, Ueber Willensfreiheit, pp. 77 ff, 83. Only not so unmixed. Contemplation, sometimes combined with emotionalism, is often combined with these rational elements. But again contemplation itself is methodically regulated.
84. According to Richard Baxter everything is sinful which is contrary to the reason given by God as a norm of action. Not only passions which have a sinful content, but all feelings which are senseless and intemperate as such. They destroy the countenance and, as things of the flesh, prevent us from rationally directing all action and feeling to God, and thus insult Him. Compare what is said of the sinfulness of anger {Christian Directory, second edition, 1698, p. 285. Tauler is öited on p. 287). On the sinfulness of anxiety, Ebenda, I, p. 287. That it is idolatry if our appetite is made the "rule or measure of eating" is maintained very emphatically (op. cit., I, pp. 310, 316, and elsewhere). In such discussions reference is made everywhere to the Proverbs and also to Plutarch's De tranquilitate Animi, afid not seldom to ascetic writings of the Middle Ages: St. Bernard, Bonaventura, and others. The contrast to "who does not love wine, women, and song..." could hardly be more sharply drawn than by the extension of '' ''^a of idolatry to all sensuous pleasures, so far as they are rf vy hygienic considerations, in which case they (like..ihese limits, but also other recreations) are permissible. L "^^ Thapter V) for further discussion. Please note that the' > i<.:d to here and elsewhere are neither dogmatic nor edfi} \.iKS, but grew out of practical ministry, and thus give a good picture of the direction which its influence took.
85. I should regret it if any evaluation of one or the other form of religion should be read into this discussion. We are not concerned with that here. It is only a question of the influence of certain things which, from a purely religious point of view, are perhaps incidental, but important for practical conduct.
86. On this, see especially the article "Moralisten, englische", by E. Troeltsch, in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, third edition.
87. How much influence quite definite religious ideas and situations, which seem to be historical accidents, have had is shown unusually clearly by the fact that in the circles of Pietism of a Reformed origin the lack of monasteries was occasionally directly regretted, and that the communistic experiments of Labadie and others were simply a substitute for monastic life.
236 Notes 236 Notes 88. As early even as several confessions of the time of the Refor- mation. Even Ritschl {Pietismus, I, p. 258 f.) does not deny, although he looks upon the later development as a deterioration of the ideas of the Reformation, that, for instance, in Conf. Gall. 25, 26, Conf. Belg. 29, Conf. Helv. post, 17, the true Reformed Church was defined by definitely empirical attributes, and that to this true Church believers were not accounted without the attribute of moral activity. (See above, note 42.)
89. "Bless God that we are not of the many" (Thomas Adams. Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 138).
90. The idea of the birthright, so important in history, thus received an important confiimation in England. "The firstborn which are written in heaven...As the firstborn is not to be defeated in his inheritance, and the enrolled names are never to be obliterated, so certainly they shall inherit eternal life" (Thomas Adams, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. xiv).
91. The Lutheran emphasis on penitent grief is foreign to the spirit of ascetic Calvinism, not in theory, but definitely in practice. For it is of no ethical value to the Calvinist; it does not help the damned, while for those certain of their election, their own sin, so far as they admit it to themselves, is a symiptom of backwardness in development. Instead of repenting of it they hate it and attempt to overcome it by activity for the glory of God. Compare the explanation of Howe (Cromwell's chaplain 1656-58) in Of Men's Enmity against God and of Reconciliation between G ^ Man {Works of English Puritan Divines, p. 237): "The cr..ejimity against God. It is the mind, therefore, not as spec. /.^,y, but as practical and active thatmust be renewed", an ' econciliation...must begin in (i) a deep conviction..,. '. ner enmity...I have been alienated from God...(2) (p,.,..,iear and lively apprehension of the monstrous iniquity and wickedness thereof." The hatred here is that of sin, not of the sinner. But as early as the famous letter of the Duchess Renata d'Este (Leonore's mother) to Calvin, in which she speaks of the hatred which she would feel toward her father and husband if she became convinced they belonged to the damned, is shown the transfer to the person. At the same time it is an example of what was said above [pp. 104-6] of how the individual became loosed from the ties resting on his natural feelings, for which the doc- trine of predestination was responsible.
92. "None but those who give evidence of being regenerate or holy persons ought to be received or counted fit members of visible Churches. Where this is wanting, the very essence of a Church is lost", as the principle is put by Owen, the Independent-Calvinistic Vice- Chancellor of Oxford under Cromwell {Inv. into the Origin of Ev. Ch.). Further, see the following essay (not translated here. — Trans l.'VTOR).
93. See following essay.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 94. Cat. Genev., p. 149. Bailey, Praxis pietatis, p. 125: "In life we should act as though no one but Moses had authority over us."
95. "The law appears to the Calvinist as an ideal norm of action. It oppresses the Lutheran because it is for him unattainable." In the Lutheran catechism it stands at the beginning in order to arouse the necessary humility, in the Reformed catechism it generally stands after the Gospel. The Calvinists accused the Lutherans of having a "virtual reluctance to becoming holy" (Möhler), while the Lutherans accused the Calvinists of an "unfree servitude to the law", and of arrogance.
96. Studies and Reflections of the Great Rebellion, pp. 79 f.
97. Among them the Song of Songs is especially noteworthy. It was for the most part simply ignored by the Puritans. Its Oriental eroticism has influenced the development of certain types of religion, such as that of St. Bernard.
98. On the necessity of this self-observation, see the sermon of Charnock, already referred to, on 2 Cor. xiii. 5, Works of the Puritan Divines, pp. 161 ff.
99. Most of the theological moralists recommended it. Thus Baxter, Christian Directory, II, pp. 77 ff., who, however, does not gloss over its dangers.
100. Moral book-keeping has, of course, been widespread elsewhere. But the emphasis which was placed upon it as the sole means of knowledge of the eternal decree of salvation or damnation was lacking, and with it the most important psychological sanction for care and exactitude in this calculation.
xoi. This was the significant difference from other attitudes which were superficially similar.
102. Baxter {Saints' Everlasting Rest, chap, xii) explains God's invisibility with the remark that just as one can carry on profitable trade with an invisible foreigner through correspondence, so is it possible by means of holy commerce with an invisible God to get possession of the one priceless pearl. These commercial similes rather than the forensic ones customary with the older moralists and the Lutherans are thoroughly characteristic of Puritanism, which in effect makes man buy his own salvation. Compare further the follow- ing passage from a sermon: "We reckon the value of a thirtg by that which a wise man will give for it, who is not ignorant of it nor under necessity. Christ, the Wisdom of God, gave Himself, His own precious blood, to redeem souls, and He knew what they were and had no need of them" (Matthew Henry, The Worth of the Soul, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 313).
103. In contrast to that, Luther himself said: "Weeping goes before action and suffering excells all accomplishment" (Weinen geht vor Wirken und Leiden übertrifft alles tun).
104. This is also shown most clearly in the development of the ethical theory of Lutheranism. On this see Hoennicke, Studien zur 238 Notes altprotestantischen Ethik (Berlin, 1902), and the instructive review of it by E. Troeltsch, Gott. Gel. Anz., 1902, No, 8. The approach of the Lutheran doctrine, especially to the older orthodox Calvinistic, was in form often very close. But the difference of religious back- ground was always apparent. In order to establish a connection between morality and faith, Melanchthon had placed the idea of repentance in the foreground. Repentance through the law must precede faith, but good works must follow it, otherwise it cannot be the truly justifying faith — almost a Puritan formula. Melanchthon admitted a certain degree of perfection to be attainable on earth. He had, in fact, originally taught that justification was given in order to make men capable of good works, and in increasing perfection lay at least the relative degree of blessedness which faith could give in this world. Also later Lutheran theologians held that good works are the necessary fruits of faith, that faith results in a new external life, just as the Reformed preachers did. The question in what good works consist Melanchthon, and especially the later Lutherans, answered more and more by reference to the law. There remained of Luther's original doctrines only the lesser degree of seriousness with which