131. At the same time, of course, the anti-authoritarian interpre- tation of the universal priesthood, typical of all asceticism, played a part. Occasionally the minister was advised to delay absolution until proof was given of genuine repentance which, as Ritschl rightly says, was in principle Calvinistic.
132. The essential points for our purposes are most easily found in Plitt, Zinzendorf's Theologie (3 vols., Gotha, 1869), I, pp. 325, 345, 381, 412. 429. 433 f-, 444. 448; II, pp. 372, 381, 385, 409 f.; Ill, pp. 131, 167, 176. Compare also Bernh. Becker, Zinzendorf und sein Christentum (Leipzig, 1900), Book III, chap. iii.
133. "In no religion do we recognize as brothers those who have not been washed in the blood of Christ and continue thoroughly changed in the sanctity of the Spirit. We recognize no ■evident ( = visible) Church of Christ except where the Word of God is taught in purity and where the members live in holiness as children of God following its precepts." The last sentence, it is true, is taken from Luther's smaller catechism but, as Ritschl points out, there it serves to answer the question how the Name of God shall be made holy, while here it serves to delimit the Church of the saints.
134. It is true that he only considered the Augsburg Confession f^ be a suitable document of the Lutheran Christian faith if, as he expressed it in his disgusting terminology, a Wundbriihe had been poured upon it. To read him is an act of penitence because his language, in its insipid melting quality, is even worse than the frightful Christo-turpentine of F. T. Vischer (in his polemics with the Munich christoterpe).
135. See Plitt, op. cit.,l,p. 346. Even more decisive is the answer, quoted in Plitt, op. cit., I, p. 381, to the question whether good works are necessary to salvation. "Unnecessary and harmful to the attain- ment of salvation, but after salvation is attained so necessary that he who does not perform them is not really saved." Thus here also they are not the cause of salvation, but the sole means of recognizing it.
136. For instance, through those caricatures of Christian freedom which Ritschl, op. cit., Ill, p. 381, so severely criticizes.
247 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 137. Above all in the greater emphasis on the idea of retributive punishment in the doctrine of salvation, which, after the repudiation of his missionary attempts by the American sects, he made the basis of his method of sanctification. After that he places the retention of childlikeness and the virtues of humble resignation in the foreground as the end of Hermhut asceticism, in sharp contrast to the inclination of his own community to an asceticism closely analogous to the Puritan.
138. Which, however, had its limits. For this reason alone it is wrong to attempt to place Zinzendorf's religion 'in. a scheme of social psychological evolutionary stages, as Lamprecht does. Furthermore, however, his whole religious attitude is influenced by nothing more strongly than the fact that he was a Count with an outlook funda- mentally feudal. Further, the emotional side of it would, from the point of view of social psychology, fit just as well into the period of the sentimental decadence of chivalry as in that of sensitiveness. If social psychology gives any clue to its difference from West European rationalism, it is most likely to be found in the patriarchal tradi- tionalism of Eastern Germany.
139. This is evident from Zinzendorf's controversy with Dippel just as, after his death, the doctrines of the Synod of 1764 bring out the character of the Hermhut community as an institution for salva- tion. See Ritschl's criticism, op. cit., Ill, p. 443 f.
140. Compare, for instance, §§151, 153, 160. That sanctification may not take place in spite of true penitence and the forgiveness of sins is evident, especially from the remarks on p. 311, and agrees with the Lutheran doctrine of salvation just as it is in disagreement with that of Calvinism (and Methodism).
141. Compare Zinzendorf's opinion, cited in Plitt, op. cit., II, p. 345. Similarly Spangenberg, Idea Fidei, p. 325.
142. Compare, for instance, Zinzendorf's remark on Matt. xx. 28, cited by Plitt, op. cit., Ill, p. 131: "When I see a man to whom God has given a great gift, I rejoice and gladly avail myself of the gift. But when I note that he is not content with his own, but wishes to increase it further, I consider it the beginning of that person's ruin." In other words, Zinzendorf denied, especially in his conversation with John Wesley in 1743, that there could be progress in holiness, because he identified it with justification and found it only in the emotional relationship to Christ (Plitt, I, p. 413). In place of the sense of being the instrument of God comes the possession of the divine; mysticism, not asceticism (in the sense to be discussed in the introduction to the following essays) (not here translated. — Translator's Note). As is pointed out there, a present, worldly state of mind is naturally what the Puritan really seeks for also. But for him the state which he interprets as the certitudo salutis is the feeling of being an active instrument, 248 Notes 248 Notes 143. But which, precisely on account of this mystical tendency, did not receive a consistent ethical justification. Zinzendorf rejects Luther's idea of divine worship in the calling as the decisive reason for performing one's duty in it. It is rather a return for the "Saviour's loyal services" (Pütt, II, p. 411).
144. His saying that "a reasonable man should not be without faith and a believer should not be unreasonable" is well known. See his Sokrates, d. i. Aufrichtige Anzeige verschiedener nicht sowohl unbekannter als vielmehr in Abfall geratener Hauptwahrheiten (i'jz'^). Further, his fondness for such authors as Bayle.
145. The decided propensity of Protestant asceticism for em- piricism, rationalized on a mathematical basis, is well known, but cannot be further analysed here. On the development of the sciences in the direction of mathematically rationalized exact investigation, the philosophical motives of it and their contrast to Bacon's view- point, see Windelband, Geschichte der Philosophie, pp. 305-7, especially the remark on p. 305, which rightly denies that modern natural science can be understood as the product of material and technical interests. Highly important relationships exist, of course, but they are much more complex. See further Windelband, Neuere Phil., I, pp. 40 IT. For the attitude of Protestant asceticism the decisive point was, as may perhaps be most clearly seen in Spener's Theolo- gische Bedenken, I, p. 232; III, p. 260, that just as the Christian is known by the fruits of his belief, the knowledge of God and His designs can only be attained through a knowledge of His works. The favourite science of all Puritan, Baptist, or Pietist Christianity was thus physics, and next to it all those other natural sciences which used a similar method, especially mathematics. It was hoped from the empirical knowledge of the divine laws of nature to ascend to a grasp of the essence of the world, which on account of the frag- mentary nature of the divine revelation, a Calvinistic idea, could never be attained by the method of metaphysical speculation. The empiricism of the seventeenth century was the means for asceticism to seek God in nature. It seemed to lead to God, philosophical speculation away from Him. In particular Spener considers the Aristotelean philosophy to have been the most harmful element in Christian tradition. Every other is better, especially the Platonic: Cons. TheoL, III, 6, i, Dist. 2, No. 13. Compare further the following characteristic passage: "Unde pro Cartesio quid dicam non habeo [he had not read him], semper tamen optavi et opto, ut Deus viros excitet, qui veram philosophiam vel tandem oculis sisterent in qua nullius hominis attenderetur auctoritas, sed sana tantum magistri nescia ratio", Spener, Com. TheoL, II, 5, No. 2. The significance of this attitude of ascetic Protestantism for the development of education, especially technical education, is well known. Combined with the attitude to fides implicita they furnished a pedagogical programme.
249 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 146. "That is a type of men who seek their happiness in four main ways: (i) to be insignificant, despised, and abased; (2) to neglect all things they do not need for the service of their Lord; (3) either to possess nothing or to give away again what they receive; (4) to work as wage labourers, not for the sake of the wage, but of the calling in the service of the Lord and their neighbour" {Rel. Reden, II, p. 180; Plitt, op. cit., I, p. 445). Not everyone can or may become a disciple, but only those who receive the call of the Lord. But according to Zinzendorf's own confession (Plitt, op. cit., 1, ■p. 449) there still remain difficulties, for the Sermon on the Mount applies formally to all. The resemblance of this free universality of love to the old Baptist ideals is evident.
147. An emotional intensification of religion was by no means entirely unknown to Lutheranism even in its later period. Rather the ascetic element, the way of life which the Lutheran suspected of being salvation by works, was the fundamental difference in this case.
148. A healthy fear is a better sign of grace than certainty, says Spener, Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 324. In the Puritan writers we, of course, also find emphatic warnings against false certainty; but at least the doctrine of predestination, so far as its influence determined religious practice, always worked in the opposite direction 149. The psychological effect of the confessional was everywhere to relieve the individual of responsibility for his own conduct, that is why it was' sought, and that weakened the rigorous consistency of the demands of asceticism.
150. How important at the same time, even for the form of the Pietist faith, was the part played by purely political factors, has been indicated by Ritschl in his study of Württemberg Pietism.
151. See Zinzendorf's statement [quoted above, note 146].
152. Of course Calvinism, in so far as it is genuine, is also patri- archal. The connection, for instance, of the success of Baxter's activities with the domestic character of industry in Kidderminster is evident from his autobiography. See the passage quoted in the Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 38: "The town liveth upon the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs, and as they stand in their loom, they can set a book before them, or edify each other..." Never- theless, there is a difference between patriarchalism based on Pietism and on the Calvinistic and especially the Baptist ethics. This problem can only be discussed in another connection.
153. Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, third edition, I, p. 598. That Frederick William I called Pietism a religion for the leisure class is more indicative of his owti Pietism than that of Spener and Francke. Even this king knew very well why he had opened his realm to the Pietists by his declaration of toleration.
154. As an introduction to Methodism the excellent article Metho- dismus by Loofs in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theo- 250 Notes logie und Kirche is particularly good. Also the works of Jacoby (especially the Handbuch des Methodismus), Kolde, Jüngst, and Southey are useful. On Wesley: Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wesley is popular. One of the best libraries on the history of Methodism is that of Northwestern University, Evanston, 111. A sort of link between classical Puritanism and Methodism was formed by the religious poet Isaac Watts, a friend of the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell (Howe) and then of Richard Cromwell. Whitefield is said to have sought his advice (cf. Skeats, op. cit., pp. 254 f.).
155. Apart from the personal influence of the Wesleys the similarity is historically determined, on the one hand, by the decline of the dogma of predestination, on the other by the powerful revival of the sola fide in the founders of Methodism, especially motivated by its specific missionary character. This brought forth a modified rejuvenation of certain mediaeval methods of revival preaching and combined them with Pietistic forms. It certainly does not belong in a general line of development toward subjectivism, since in this respect it stood behind not only Pietism, but also the Bernardino religion of the Middle Ages.
156. In this manner Wesley himself occasionally characterized the effect of the Methodist faith. The relationship to Zinzendorf's Glückseligkeit is evident.
157. Given in Watson's Life of Wesley, p. 331 (German edition).
158. J. Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen über die Lehrbegriffe der kleinen protestantischen Kirchenparteien, edited by Hundeshagen (Frankfurt, 1863), p. 147.
159. Whitefield, the leader of the predestinationist group which after his death dissolved for lack of organization, rejected Wesley's doctrine of perfection in its essentials. In fact, it is only a makeshift for the real Calvinistic idea of proof.
160. Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. 145. Somewhat different in Loofs, op. cit. Both results are typical of all similar religious phenomena.
161. Thus in the conference of 1 770. The first conference of 1 744 had already recognized that the Biblical words came "within a hair" of Cal- vinism on the one hand and Antinomianism on the other. But since they were so obscure it was not well to be separated by doctrinal differ- ences so long as the validity of the Bible as a practical norm was upheld.
162. The Methodists were separated from the Herrnhuters by their doctrine of the possibility of sinless perfection, which Zin- zendorf, in particular, rejected. On the other hand, Wesley felt the emotional element in the Hermhut religion to be mysticism and branded Luther's interpretation of the law as blasphemous. This shows the barrier which existed between Lutheranism and every kind of rational religious conduct.
163. John Wesley emphasizes the fact that everywhere, among Quakers, Presbyterians, and High Churchmen, one must believe in 251 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism dogmas, except in Methodism. With the above, compare the rather summary discussion in Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England, 1688-1851.
164. Compare Dexter, Congregationalism, pp. 455 ff.
165. Though naturally it might interfere with it, as is to-day the case among the American negroes. Furthermore, the often definitely pathological character of Methodist emotionalism as compared to the relatively mild type of Pietism may possibly, along with purely historical reasons and the publicity of the process, be connected with the greater ascetic penetration of life in the areas where Method- ism is widespread. Only a neurologist could decide that.
166. Loofs, op. cit., p. 750, strongly emphasizes the fact that Methodism is distinguished from other ascetic movements in that it came after the English Enlightenment, and compares it with the (surely much less pronounced) German Renaissance of Pietism in the first third of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is permissible, following Ritschl, Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, I, pp. 568 f., to retain the parallel with the Zinzendorf form of Pietism, which, unlike that of Spener and Francke, was already itself a reaction against the Enlightenment. However, this reaction takes a very different course in Methodism from that of the Hermhuters, at least so far as they were influenced by Zinzendorf.
167. But which, as is shown by the passage from John Wesley (below, p. 175), it developed in the same way and with the same effect as the other ascetic denominations.
168. And, as we have seen, milder forms of the consistent ascetic ethics of Puritanism; while if, in the popular manner, one wished to interpret these religious conceptions as only exponents or reflections of capitalistic institutions, just the opposite would have to be the case.
169. Of the Baptists only the so-called General Baptists go back to the older movement. The Particular Baptists were, as we have pointed out already, Calvinists, who in principle limited Church membership to the regenerate, or at least personal believers, and hence remained in principle voluntarists and opponents of any State Church. Under Cromwell, no doubt, they were not always consistent in practice. Neither they nor the General Baptists, however important they are as the bearers of the Baptist tradition, give us any occasion for an especial dogmatic analysis here. That the Quakers, though formally a new foundation of George Fox and his associates, were fundamentally a continuation of the Baptist tradition, is beyond question. The best introduction to their history, including their relations to Baptists and Mennonites, is Robert Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, 1876. On the history of the Baptists, compare, among others, H. M. Dexter, The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, as told by himself and his contemporaries, Boston, i88i (also J. C. Lang in The Baptist Quarterly 252 Notes 252 Notes Review, 1883, p. i); J. Murch, A History of the Presb. and Gen. Bapt. Church in the West of England, London, 1835; A. H. Newman, History of the Baptist Church in the U.S., New York, 1894 (Am. Church Hist. Series, vol. 2); Vedder, A Short History of the Baptists, London, 1897; E. B. Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists, New York, 1902; G. Lorimer, The Baptists in History, 1902; J. A, Seiss, The Baptist System Examined, Lutheran Publication Society, 1902; furthermaterial in the Baptist Handbook, London, 1896 ff.; Baptist Manuals, Paris, 1891-93; The Baptist Quarterly Review; and the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oberlin, 1900.
The best Baptist library seems to be that of Colgate College in the State of New York. For the history of the Quakers the collection in Devonshire House in London is considered the best (not available to me). The official modern organ of orthodoxy is the American Friend, edited by Professor Jones; the best Quaker history that of Rowntree. In addition: Rufus B. Jones, George Fox, an Autobiography, Phila., 1903; Alton C. Thomas, A History of the Society of Friends in America, Phila., 1895; Edward Grubbe, Social Aspects of the Quaker Faith, London, 1899. Also the copious and excellent biographical literature.
170. It is one of the many merits of Karl MüUer's Kirchengeschichte to have given the Baptist movement, great in its way, even though outwardly unassuming, the place it deserved in his work. It has suffered more than any other from the pitiless persecution of all the Churches, because it wished to be a sect in the specific sense of that word. Even after five generations it was discredited before the eyes of all the world by the debacle of the related eschatological experiment in Münster. And, continually oppressed and driven underground, it was long after its origin before it attained a consistent formulation of its religious doctrines. Thus it produced even less theology than would have been consistent with its principles, which were themselves hostile to a specializea development of its faith in God as a science. That was not very pleasing to the older professional theologians, even in its own time, and it made little impression on them. But many more recent ones have taken the same attitude. In Ritschl, Pietismus, I, pp. 22 f., the rebaptizers are not very adequately, in fact, rather contemptuously, treated. One is tempted to speak of a theological bourgeois standpoint. That, in spite of the fact that Cornelius's fine work {Geschichte des Münsterschen Aufruhrs) had been available for decades.
Here also Ritschl everywhere sees a retrogression from his stand- point toward Catholicism, and suspects direct influences of the radical wing of the Franciscan tradition. Even if such could be proved in a few cases, these threads would be very thin. Above all, the historical fact was probably that the official Catholic Church, wherever the worldly asceticism of the laity went as far as the The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism formation of conventicles, regarded it with the utmost suspicion and attempted to encourage the formation of orders, thus outside the world, or to attach it as asceticism of the second grade to the existing orders and bring it under control. Where this did not succeed, it felt the danger that the practice of subjectivist ascetic morality might lead to the denial of authority and to heresy, just as, and with the same justification, the Elizabethan Church felt toward the half- Pietistic prophesying Bible conventicles, even when their conformism was undoubted; a feeling which was expressed by the Stuarts in their Book of Sports, of which later. The history of numerous heretical movements, including,, for instance, the Humiliati and the Beguins, as well as the fate of St. Francis, are the proofs of it. The preaching of the mendicant friars, especially the Franciscans, probably did much to prepare the way for the ascetic lay morality of Calvinist- Baptist Protestantism, But the numerous close relationships between the asceticism of Western monasticism and the ascetic conduct of Protestantism, the importance of which must continually be stressed for our particular problems, are based in the last analysis on the fact that important factors are necessarily common to every asceticism on the basis of Biblical Christianity. Furthermore, every asceticism, no matter what its faith, has need of certain tried methods of subduing the flesh.
Of the following sketch it may further be remarked that its brevity is due to the fact that the Baptist ethic is of only very limited importance for the problem considered primarily in this study, the development of the religious background of the bourgeois idea of the calling. It contributed nothing new whatever to it. The much more important social aspect of the movement must for the present remain untouched. Of the history of the older Baptist movement, we can, from the view-point of our problem, present here only what was later important for the development of the sects in which we are interested: Baptists, Quakers, and, more incidentally, Mennonites.
171. See above [note 92].
172. On their origin and changes, see A. Ritschl in his Gesammelte Aufsätze, pp. 69 f. * 173. Naturally the Baptists have always repudiated the designation of a sect. They form the Church in the sense of the Epistle to the Ephesians v. 27. But in our terminology they form a sect not only because they lack all relation to the State. The relation between Church and State of early Christianity was even for the Quakers (Barclay) their ideal; for to them, as to many Pietists, only a Church under the Cross was beyond suspicion of its purity. But the Calvinists as well, faute de mieux, similarly even the Catholic Church in the same circumstances, were forced to favour the separation of Church and State under an unbelieving State or under the Cross. Neither were they a sect, because induction to membership in the Church took Notes place de facto through a contract between the congregation and the candidates. For that was formally the case in the Dutch Reformed communities (as a result of the original political situation) in accord- ance with the old Church constitution (see v. Hoffmann, Kirchen- verfassungsrecht der nieder!. Reformierten, Leipzig, 1902).
On the contrary, it was because such a religious community could only be voluntarily organized as a sect, not compulsorily as a Church, if it did not wish to include the unregenerate and thus depart from the Early Christian ideal. For the Baptist communities it was an essential of the very idea of their Church, while for the Calvinists it was an historical accident. To be sure, that the latter were also urged by very definite religious motives in the direction of the believers' Church has already been indicated. On the distinction between Church and sect, see the following essay. The concept of sect which I have adopted here has been used at about the same time and, I assume, independently from me, by Kattenbusch in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (Article Sekte). Troeltsch in his Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen accepts it and discusses it more in detail. See also below, the introduction to the essays on the Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen.
174. How important this symbol was, historically, for the conser- vation of the Church commünty, since it was an unambiguous and unmistakable sign, has been very clearly shown by Cornelius, op. cit.
175. Certain approaches to it in the Mennonites' doctrine of justi- fication need not concern us here.
176. This idea is perhaps the basis of the religious interest in the discussion of questions like the incarnation of Christ and his relation- ship to the Virgin Mary, which, often as the sole purely dogmatic part, stands out so strangely in the oldest documents of Baptism (for instance the confessions printed in Cornelius, op. cit., Appendix to Vol, n. On this question, see K. Müller, Kirchengeschichte, II, i, p. 330). The difference between the christology of the Reformed Church and the Lutheran (in the doctrine of the so-called communicatio idiomatum) seems to have been based on similar religious interests.
177. It was expressed especially in the original strict avoidance even of everyday intercourse with the excommunicated, a point at which even the Calvinists, who in principle held the opinion that worldly affairs were not affected by spiritual censure, made large concessions. See the following essay.
178. How this principle was applied by the Quakers to seemingly trivial externals (refusal to remove the hat, to kneel, bow, or use formal address) is well known. The basic idea is to a certain extent characteristic of all asceticism. Hence the fact that true asceticism is always hostile to authority." In Calvinism it appeared in the principle that only Christ should rule, in the Church. In the case of Pietism' one may think of Spener's attempts to find a Biblical justification of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism titles. Catholic asceticism, so far as ecclesiastical authority was con- cerned, broke through this tendency in its oath of obedience, by interpreting obedience itself in ascetic terms. The overturning of this principle in Protestant asceticism is the historical basis of the peculiarities of even the contemporary democracy of the peoples influenced by Puritanism as distinct from that of the Latin spirit. It is also part of the historical background of that lack of respect of the American which is, as the case may be, so irritating or so refreshing.
179. No doubt this was true from the beginning for the Baptists essentially only of the New Testament, not to the same extent of the Old. Especially the Sermon on the Mount enjoyed a peculiar prestige as a programme of social ethic in all denominations.
180. Even Schwenkfeld had considered the outward performance of the sacraments an adiaphoron, while the General Baptists and the Mennonites held strictly to Baptism and the Communion, the Men- nonites to the washing of feet in addition. On the other hand, for the predestinationists the depreciation, in fact for all except the com- munion— one may even say the suspicion — in which the sacraments were held, went very far. See the following essay.