I. pp. 545 ff-

10. On Milton's theology see the essay of Eibach in the Theol. Studieti und Kritiken, 1879. Macaulay's essay on it, on the occasion of Sumner's translation of the Doctrina Christiana, rediscovered in 1823 (Tauchnitz edition, 185, pp. i ff.), is superficial. For more detail see the somewhat too schematic six-volume English work of Masson, and the German biography of Milton by Stern which rests upon it. Milton early began to grow away from the doctrine of pre- destination in the form of the double decree, and reached a wholly free Christianity in his old age. In his freedom from the tendencies of his own time he may in a certain sense be compared to Sebastian Franck. Only Milton was a practical and positive person, Franck predominantly critical. Milton is a Puritan only in the broader sense of the rational organization of his life in the world in accordance with the divine will, which formed the permanent inheritance of later times from Calvinism. Franck could be called a Puritan in much the same sense. Both, as isolated figures, must remain outside our investigation.
11. "Hie est fides summus gradus; credere Deum esse clementum, 220
Notes
qui tarn paucos salvat, justum, qui sua voluntate nos damnabiles facit", is the. text of the famous passage in De servo arbitrio.
12. The truth is that both Luther and Calvin believed funda- mentally in a double God (see Ritschl's remarks in Geschichte des Pietismus and Kostlin, Gott in Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, third edition), the gracious and kindly Father of the New Testament, who dominates the first books of the Institutio Christiana, and behind him the Deus absconditus as an arbitrary despot. For Luther, the God of the New Testament kept the upper hand, because he avoided reflection on metaphysical questions as useless and dangerous, while for Calvin the idea of a transcendental God won out. In the popular development of Calvinism, it is true, this idea could not be maintained, but what took his place was not the Heavenly Father of the New Testament but the Jehovah of the Old.
13. Compare on the following: Scheibe, Calvins Prädestinations- lehre (Halle, 1897). On Calvinistic theology in general, Heppe, Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche (Elberfeld, 1861).
14. Corpus Reformator urn, LXXVH, pp. 186 ff.
15. The preceding exposition of the Calvinistic doctrine can be found in much the same form as here given, for instance in Hoorn- beek's Theologia practica (Utrecht, 1663), L. H, c. i ; de predesti- natione, the section stands characteristically directly under the heading De Deo. The Biblical foundation for it is principally the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is unnecessary for us here to analyse the various inconsistent attempts to combine with the predestination and providence of God the responsibility and free will of the individual. They began as early as in Augustine's first attempt to develop the doctrine.
16. "The deepest community (with God) is found not in institu- tions or corporations or churches, but in the secrets of a solitary heart", as Dowden puts the essential point in his fine book Puritan and Anglican(p. 234). This deep spiritual loneliness of the individual applied as well to the Jansenists of Port Royal, who were also predestinationists.
17. "Contra qui huiusmodi ccetum [namely a Church which main- tains a pure doctrine, sacraments, and Church discipline] contemnunt . . . salutis suae certi esse non possunt; et qui in illo contemtu perseverat electus non est." Olevian, De subst. feed., p. 222.
18. "It is said that God sent His Son to save the human race, but that was not His purpose. He only wished to help a few out of their degradation — and I say unto you that God died only for the elect" (sermon held in 1609 at Broek, near Rogge, Wtenbogaert, II, p. 9. Compare Nuyens, op. cit., II, p. 232). The explanation of the role of Christ is also confused in Hanserd Knolly's Confession. It is everywhere assumed that God did not need His instrumentality.
19. Entzauberung der Welt. On this process see the other essays in my Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. The peculiar position of
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the old Hebrew ethic, as compared with the closely related ethics of Egypt and Babylon, and its development after the time of the prophets, rested, as is shown there, entirely on this fundamental fact, the rejection of sacramental magic as a road to salvation. (This process is for Weber one of the most important aspects of the broader process of rationalization, in which he sums up his philosophy of history. See various parts of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft and H. Grab, Der Begriff des Rationalen hei Max Weber. — Translator's Note.)
20. Similarly the most consistent doctrine held that baptism was required by positive ordinance, but was not necessary to salvation. For that reason the strictly Puritan Scotch and English Independents were able to maintain the principle that children of obvious reprobates should not be baptized (for instance, children of drunkards). An adult who desired to be baptized, but was not yet ripe for the com- munion, the Synod of Edam of 1586 (Art. 32, i) recommended should be baptized only if his conduct were blameless, and he should have placed his desires sonder superstitie.
21. This negative attitude toward all sensuous culture is, as Dow- den, op. cit., shows, a very fundamental element of Puritanism.
22. The expression individualism includes the most heterogeneous things imaginable. What is here understood by it will, I hope, be clear from the following discussion. In another sense of the word, Lutheranism has been called individualistic, because it does not attempt any ascetic regulation of life. In yet another quite different sense the word is used, for example, by Dietrich Schäfer when in his study, "Zvir Beurteilung des Wormser Konkordats", Abh. d. Berl. Akad. (1905), he calls the Middle Ages the era of pronounced individuality because, for the events relevant for the historian, irrational factors then had a significance which they do not possess to-day. He is right, but so perhaps are also those whom he attacks in his remarks, for they mean something quite different, when they speak of individuality and individualism. Jacob Burchhardt's brilliant ideas are to-day at least partly out of date, and a thorough analysis of these concepts in historical terms would at the present time be highly valuable to science. Quite the opposite is, of course, true when the play impulse causes certain historians to define the concept in such a way as to enable them to use it as a label for any epoch of history they please.
23. And in a similar, though naturally less sharp, contrast to the later Catholic doctrine. The deep pessimism of Pascal, which also rests on the doctrine of predestination, is, on the other hand, of Jansenist origin, and the resulting individualism of renunciation by no means agrees with the official Catholic position. See the study by Honigsheim on the French Jansenists, referred to in Chap. III. note 10.
24. The same holds for the Jansenists.
25. Bailey, Praxis pietatis (German edition, Leipzig, 1724), p. 187. Also P. J. Spener in his Theologische Bedenken (according to third
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Notes
edition, Halle, 1712) adopts a similar standpoint. A friend seldom gives advice for the glory of God, but generally for mundane (though not necessarily egotistical) reasons. "He [the knowing man] is blind in no man's cause, but best sighted in his own. He confines himself to the circle of his own affairs and thrusts not his fingers into needless fires. He sees the falseness of it [the world] and therefore learns to trust himself ever, others so far as not to be damaged by their dis- appointment", is the philosophy of Thomas Adams {Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 11). Bailey {Praxis pietatis, p. 176) further recom- mends every morning before going out among people to imagine oneself going into a wild forest full of dangers, and to pray God for the "cloak of foresight and righteousness". This feeling is charac- teristic of all the ascetic denominations without exception, and in the case of many Pietists led directly to a sort of hermit's life within the world. Even Spangenberg in the (Moravian) Idea fides fratum, p. 382, calls attention with emphasis to Jer. xvii. 5: "Cursed is the man who trusteth in man." To grasp the peculiar misanthropy of this attitude, note also Hoombeek's remarks {Theologia practica, I, p. 882) on the duty to love one's enemy: "Denique hoc magis nos ulcisimur, quo proximum, inultum nobis, tradimus ultori Deo — Quo quis plus se ulscitur, eo minus id pro ipso agit Deus." It is the same transfer of vengeance that is found in the parts of the Old Testament written after the exile ; a subtle intensification and refinement of the spirit of revenge compared to the older "eye for an eye". On brotherly love, see below, note 34.
26. Of course the confessional did not have only that effect. The explanations, for instance, of Muthmann, Z. f. Rel. Psych., I, Heft 2, p. 65, are too simple for such a highly complex psychological problem as the confessional.
27. This is a fact which is of especial importance for the inter- pretation of the psychological basis of Calvinistic social organizations. They all rest on spiritually individualistic, rational motives. The individual never enters emotionally into them. The glory of God and one's own salvation always remain above the threshold of conscious- ness. This accounts for certain characteristic features of the social organization of peoples with a Puritan past even to-day.
28. The fundamentally anti-authoritarian tendency of the doctrine, which at bottom undermined every responsibility for ethical conduct or spiritual salvation on the part of Church or State as useless, led again and again to its proscription, as, for instance, by the States- General of the Netherlands. The result was always the formation of conventicles (as after 16 14).
29. On Bunyan compare the biography of Froude in the English Men of Letters series, also Macaulay's superficial sketch {Miscel. Works, n, p. 227). Bunyan was indifferent to the denominational dis- tinctions within Calvinism, but was himself a strict Calvinistic Baptist.
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
30. It is tempting to refer to the undoubted importance for the social character of Reformed Christianity of the necessity for salva- tion, following from the Calvinistic idea of -'incorporation into the body of Christ" (Calvin, Instit. Christ, III, 11, 10), of reception into a community conforming to the divine prescriptions. From our point of view, however, the centre of the problem is somewhat different. That doctrinal tenet could have been developed in a Church of purely institutional character {anstaltsmässig), and, as is well known, this did happen. But in itself it did not possess the psychological force to awaken the initiative to form such communities nor to imbue them with the power which Calvinism possessed. Its tendency to form a community worked itself out very largely in the world outside the Church organizations ordained by God. Here the belief that the Christian proved (see below) his state of grace by action in majorem Dei gloriam was decisive; and the sharp condemnation of idolatry of the flesh and of all dependence on personal relations to other men was bound unperceived to direct this energy into the field of objective (impersonal) activity. The Christian who took the proof of his state of grace seriously acted in the service of God's ends, and these could only be impersonal. Every purely emotional, that is not rationally motivated, personal relation of man to man easily fell in the Puritan, as in every ascetic ethic, under the suspicion of idolatry of the flesh. In addition to what has already been said, this is clearly enough shown for the case of friendship by the following warning: "It is an irrational act and not fit for a rational creature to love any one farther than reason will allow us. ... It very often taketh up men's minds so as to hinder their love of God" (Baxter, Christian Directory, IV, p. 253). We shall meet such arguments again and again.
The Calvinist was fascinated by the idea that God in creating the world, including the order of society, must have willed things to be objectively purposeful as a means of adding to His glory ; not the flesh for its own sake, but the organization of the things of the flesh under His will. The active energies of the elect, liberated by the doctrine of predestination, thus flowed into the struggle to rationalize the world. Especially the idea that the public welfare, or as Baxter (Christian Directory, IV, p. 262) puts it, quite in the sense of later liberal rationalism, "The good of the many" (with a somewhat forced reference to Rom. ix. 3), was to be preferred to any personal or private good of the individual, followed, although not in itself new, for Puritanism from tne repudiation of idolatry of the flesh. The traditional American objection to performing personal service is probably connected, besides the other important causes resulting from democratic feelings, at least indirectly with that tradition. Similarly, the relative immunity of formerly Puritan peoples to Caesarism, and, in general, the subjectively free attitude of the English to their great statesmen as compared with liftany things which we
224
Notes
have experienced since 1878 in Germany positively and negatively. On the one hand, there is a greater w^illingness to give the great man his due, but, on the other, a repudiation of all hysterical idolization of him and of the naive idea that political obedience could be due anyone from thankfulness. On the sinfulness of the belief in authority, which is only permissible in the form of an impersonal authority, the Scriptures, as well as of an excessive devotion to even the most holy and virtuous of men, since that might interfere with obedience to God, see Baxter, Christian Directory (second edition, 1678), I, p. 56. The political consequences of the renunciation of idolatry of the flesh and the principle which was first applied only to the Church but later to life in general, that God alone should rule, do not belong in this investigation.
31. Of the relation between dogmatic and practical psychological consequence we shall often have to speak. That the two are not identical it is hardly necessary to remark.
'^2. Social, used of course without any of the implications attached to the modem sense of the word, meaning simply activity within the Church, politics, or any other social organization.
33. "Good works performed for any other purpose than the glory of God are sinful" {Hanserd Knolly's Confession, chap. xvi).
34. What such an impersonality of brotherly love, resulting from the orientation of life solely to God's will, means in the field of religious group life itself may be well illustrated by the attitude of the China Inland Mission and the International Missionaries Alliance (see Wameck, Gesch. d. prot. Missionären, pp. 99, 1 1 1). At tremendous expense an army of missionaries was fitted out, -for instance one thousand for China alone, in order by itinerant preaching to ofifer the Gospel to all the heathen in a strictly literal sense, since Christ had commanded it and made His second coming dependent on it. Whether these heathen should be converted to Christianity and thus attain salvation, even whether they could understand the language in which the missionary preached, was a matter of small importance and could be left to God, Who alone could control such things. According to Hudson Taylor (see Wameck, op. cit.), China has about fifty million families; one thousand missionaries could each reach fifty families per day (!) or the Gospel could be presented to all the Chinese in less than three years. It is precisely the same manner in which, for instance, Calvinism carried out its Church discipline. The end was not the salvation of those subject to it, which was the affair of God alone (in practice their own) and could not be in any way influenced by the means at the disposal of the Church, but simply the increase of God's glory. Calvinism as such is not responsible for those feats of missionary zeal, since they rest on an interdenominational basis. Calvin himself denied the duty of sending missions to the heathen since a further expansion of the
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The Protestafit Ethic afid the Spirit of Capitalism
Church is wiiits Dei opus. Nevertheless, they obviously originate in the ideas, running through the whole Puritan ethic, according to which the duty to love one's neighbour is satisfied by fulfilling God's commandments to increase His glory. The neighbour thereby receives all that is due him, and anything further is God's affair. Humanity in relation to one's neighbour has, so to speak, died out. That is indicated by the most various circumstances.
Thus, to mention a remnant of that atmosphere, in the field of charity of the Reformed Church, which in certain respects is justly famous, the Amsterdam orphans, with (in the twentieth century!) their coats and trousers divided vertically into a black and a red, or a red and a green half, a sort of fool's costume, and brought in parade formation to church, formed, for the feelings of the past, a highly uplifting spectacle. It served the glory of God precisely to the extent that all personal and human feelings were necessarily insulted by it. And so, as we shall see later, even in all the details of private life. Naturally all that signified only a tendency and we shall later ourselves have to make certain qualifications. But as one very important tendency of this ascetic faith, it was necessary to point it out here.
35. In all these respects the ethic of Port Royal, although pre- destinationist, takes quite a different standpoint on account of its mystical and otherworldly orientation, which is in so far Catholic (see Honigsheim, op. cit.).
36. Hundeshagen (Beitr. z. Kirchenverfassungsgesch. u. Kirchen- politik, 1864, I, p. 37) takes the view, since often repeated, that predestination was a dogma of the theologians, not a popular doctrine. But that is only true if the people is identified with the mass of the uneducated lower classes. Even then it has only limited validity. Köhler {op. cit) found that in the forties of the nineteenth century just those masses (meaning the petite bourgeoisie of Holland) were thoroughly imbued with predestination. Anyone who denied the double decree was to them a heretic and a condemned soul. He himself was asked about the time of his rebirth (in the sense of pre- destination). Da Costa and the separation of de Kock were greatly influenced by it. Not only Croniwell, in whose case Zeller {Das Theologische System Zwinglis, p. 17) has already shown the effects of the dogma most effectively, but also his army knew very well what it was about. Moreover, the canons of the synods of Dordrecht and Westminster- were national questions of the first importance. Crom- well's tryers and ejectors admitted only believers in predestination, and Baxter {Life, I, p. 72), although he was otherwise its opponent, considers its effect on the quality of the clergy to be important. That the Reformed Pietists, the- members of the English and Dutch con- venticles, should not have imderstood the doctrine is quite impossible. It was precisely what drove them together to seek the certitudo salutis.
226
Notes
What significance the doctrine of predestination does or does not have when it remains a dogma of the theologians is shown by perfectly orthodox Catholicism, to which it was by no means strange as an esoteric doctrine under various forms. What is important is that the idea of the individual's obligation to consider himself of the elect and prove it to himself was always denied. Compare for the Catholic doctrine, for instance, A. Van Wyck, Tract, de prcedestinatione (Cologne, 1708). To what extent Pascal's doctrine of predestination was correct, we cannot inquire here.
Hundeshagen, who dislikes the doctrine, evidently gets his im- pressions primarily from German sources. His antipathy is based on the purely deductive opinion that it necessarily leads to moral fatalism and antinomianism. This opinion has already been refuted by Zeller, op. cit. That such a result was possible cannot, of course, be denied. Both Melanchthon and Wesley speak of it. But it is charac- teristic that in both cases it is combined with an emotional religion of faith. For them, lacking the rational idea of proof, this consequence was in fact not unnatural.
The same consequences appeared in Islam. But why? Because the Mohammedan idea was that of predetermination, not predestination, and was applied to fate in this world, not in the next. In consequence the most important thing, the proof of the believer in predestination, played no part in Islam. Thus only the fearlessness of the warrior (as in the case of moira) could result, but there were no consequences for rationalization of life; there was no religious sanction for them. See the (Heidelberg) theological dissertation of F. Ullrich, Die Vorherhestimmungslehre itn Islam u. Christenheit, 1900. The modifi- cations of the doctrine which came in practice, for instance Baxter, did not disturb it in essence so long as the idea that the election of God, and its proof, fell upon the concrete individual, was not shaken. Finally, and above all, all the great men of Puritanism (in the broadest sense) took their departure from this doctrine, whose terrible serious- ness deeply influenced their youthful development. Milton like, in declining order it is true, Baxter, and, still later, the free-thinker Franklin. Their later emancipation from its strict interpretation is directly parallel to the development which the religious movement as a whole underwent in the same direction. And all the great religious revivals, at least in Holland, and most of those in England, took it ua^again.
37. As is true in such a striking way of the basic atmosphere of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
38. This question meant less to the later Lutheran, even apart from the doctrine of predestination, than to the Calvinist. Not because he was less interested in the salvation of his soul, but because, in the form which the Lutheran Church had taken, its character as an institution for salvation (Heilsanstalt) came to the fore. The individual
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
thus felt himself to be an object of its care and dependent on it. The problem was first raised within Lutheranism characteristically enough through the Pietist movement. The question of certitudo salutis itself has, however, for every non -sacramental religion of salvation, whether Buddhism, Jainism, or anything else, been abso- lutely fundamental; that must not be forgotten. It has been the origin of all psychological drives of a purely religious character.
39. Thus expressly in the letter to Bucer, Corp. Ref. 29, p. 883 f. Compare with that again Scheibe, op. cit., p. 30.
40. The Westminster Confession (XVIII, p. 2) also assures the elect of indubitable certainty of grace, although with all our activity we remain useless servants and the struggle against evil lasts one's whole life long. But even the chosen one often has to struggle long and hard to attain the certitudo which the consciousness of having done his duty gives him and of which a true believer will never entirely be deprived.
41. The orthodox Calvinistic doctrine referred to faith and the consciousness of community with God in the sacraments, and men- tioned the "other fruits of the Spirit" only incidentally. See the passages in Heppe, op. cit., p. 425. Calvin himself most emphatically denied that works were indications of favour before God, although he, like the Lutherans, considered them the fruits of belief {Instit. Christ, 111,2, 37, 38). The actual evolution to the proof of faith through works, which is characteristic of asceticism, is parallel to a gradual modification of the doctrines of Calvin. As with Luther, the true Church was first marked off primarily by purity of doctrine and sacraments, but later the disciplina came to be placed on an equal footing with the other two. This evolution may be followed in the passages given by Heppe, op. cit., pp. 194-5, as well as in the manner in which Church members were acquired in the Netherlands by the end of the sixteenth century (express subjection by agreement to Church discipline as the principal prerequisite).
42. For example, Olevian, De substantia fcederis gratuiti inter Deum et electos (1585), p. 257; Heidegger, Corpus Theologice, XXIV, p. 87; and other passages in Heppe, Dogmatik der ev. ref. Kirche (1861), p. 425-
43. On this point see the remarks of Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. 48.
44. Thus, for example, in Baxter the distinction between mortal and venial sin reappears in a truly Catholic sense. The former is a sign of the lack of grace which can only be attained by the conversion of one's whole life. The latter is not incompatible with grace.
45. As held in many difTerent shades by Baxter, Bailey, Sedgwick, Hoombeek. Further see examples given by Schneckenburger, op. cit., p. 262.
46. The conception of the state of grace as a sort of social estate (somewhat like that of the ascetics of the early Church) is very common.
228
Notes
See for instance Schortinghuis, Het innige Christendom U740 proscribed by the States-General) !
47. Thus, as we shall see later, in countless passages, especially the conclusion, of Baxter's Christian Directory. This recommendation of worldly activity as a means of overcoming one's own feeling of moral inferiority is reminiscent of Pascal's psychological interpretation of the impulse of acquisition and ascetic activity as means to deceive oneself about one's own moral worthlessness. For him the belief in predestination and the conviction of the original sinfulness of every- thing pertaining to the flesh resulted only in renunciation of the world and the recommendation of contemplation as the sole means of lightening the burden of sin and attaining certainty of salvation. Of the orthodox Catholic and the Jansenist versions of the idea of calling an acute analysis has been made by Dr. Paul Honigsheim in the dissertation cited above (part of a larger study, which it is hoped will be continued). The Jansenists lacked every trace of a connection between certainty of salvation and worldly activity. Their concept of calling has, even more strongly than the Lutheran or even the orthodox Catholic, the sense of acceptance of the situation in life in which one finds oneself, sanctioned not only, as in Catholicism by the social order, but also by the voice of one's own conscience (Honigsheim, op. cit., pp. 139 ff.).
48. The very lucidly written sketch of Lobstein in the Festgabe für H. Holtzmann, which starts from his view-point, may also be compared with the following. It has been criticized for too sharp an emphasis on the certitudo salutis. But just at this point Calvin's theology must be distinguished from Calvinism, the theological system from the needs of religious practice. All the religious move- ments which have affected large masses have started from the question, "How can I become certain of my salvation?" As we have said, it not only plays a central part in this case but in the history of all religions, even in India. And could it well be otherwise?
49. Of course it cannot be denied that the full development of this conception did not take place until late Lutheran times (Prastorius, Nicolai, Meisner). It is present, however, even in Johannes Gerhard, quite in the sense meant here. Hence Ritschl in Book IV of his Geschichte des Pietismus (II, pp. 3 ff.) interprets the introduction of this concept into Lutheranism as a Renaissance or an adoption of Catholic elements. He does not deny (p. 10) that the problem of individual salvation was the same for Luther as for the Catholic Mystics, but he believes that the solution was precisely opposite in the t\Vo cases. I can, of course, have no competent opinion of my own. That the atmosphere of Die Freiheit eines Christenmenschen is different, on the one hand, from the sweet flirtation with the liebem Jesulein of the later writers, and on the other from Tauler's religious feeling, is naturally obvious to anyone. Similarly the retention of
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
the mystic-magical element in Luther's doctrines of the Communion certainly has different religious motives from the Bemhardine piety, the "Song of Songs feeling" to wliich Ritschl again and again returns as the source of the bridal relations with Christ. But might not, among other things, that doctrine of the Communion have favoured the revival of mystical religious emotions? Further, it is by no means accurate to say that (p. 1 1, op. cit.) the freedom of the mystic consisted entirely in isolation from the world. Especially Tauler has, in passages which from the point of view of the psychology of religion are very interesting, maintained that the order which is thereby brought into thoughts concerning worldly activities is one practical result of the nocturnal contemplation which he recommends, for instance, in case of insomnia. "Only thereby [the mystical union with God at night before going to sleep] is reason clarified and the brain strengthened, and man is the whole day the more peacefully and divinely guided by virtue of the inner discipline of having truly united himself with God : then all his works shall be set in order. And thus when a man has forewarned (= prepared) himself of his work, and has placed his trust in virtue; then if he comes into the world, his works shall be virtuous and divine" {Predigten, fol. 318). Thus we see, and we shall return to the point, that mystic con- templation and a rational attitude toward the calling are not in them- selves mutually contradictory. The opposite is only true when the religion takes on a directly hysterical character, which has not been the case with all mystics nor even all Pietists.
50. On this see the introduction to the following essays on the Wirt- schaftsethik der Weltreligionen (not included in this translation : German in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoi^iologie. — Translator's Note).
51". In this assumption Calvinism has a point of contact with official Catholicism. But for the Catholics there resulted the necessity of the sacrament of repentance; for the Reformed Church that of practical proof through activity in the world.
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
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
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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 dis- cussion. Please note that the' > i 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.
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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 the Bible, especially the particular norms of the Old Testament, was taken. The decalogue remained, as a codification of the most im- portant ideas of the natural moral law, the essential norm of human action. But there was no firm link connecting its legal validity with the more and more strongly emphasized importance of faith for justification, because this faith (see above) had a fundamentally different psychological character from the Calvinistic.
The true Lutheran standpoint of the early period had to be abandoned by a Church which looked upon itself as an institution for salvation. But another had not been found. Especially was it impossible, for fear of losing their dogmatic foundation (sola fide!), to accept the ascetic rationalization of conduct as the moral task of the individual. For there was no motive to give the idea of proof such a significance as it attained in Calvinism through the doctrine of predestination. Moreover, the magical interpretation of the sacra- ments, combined with the lack of this doctrine, especially the asso- ciation of the regeneratio, or at least its beginning with baptism, necessarily, assuming as it did the universality of grace, hindered the development of methodical morality. For it weakened the contrast between the state of nature and the state of grace, especially when combined with the strong Lutheran emphasis on original sin. No less important was the entirely forensic interpretation of the act of justi- fication which assumed that God's decrees might be changed through the influence of particular acts of repentance of the converted sinner. And that was just the element to which Melanchthon gave increasing emphasis. The whole development of his doctrine, which gave increasing weight to repentance, was intimately connected with his
239
The ProteMant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
profession of the freedom of the will. That was what primarily determined the- uwrnethodical character of Lutheran conduct.
Particular ac ts of grace for particular sins, not the development of an aristoci'ac"./ of saints creating the certainty of their own salvation, was the nece^ssary form salvation took for the average Lutheran, as the retention c^f the confession proves. Thus it could develop neither a morality free from the law nor a rational asceticism in terms of the law. Rather the law remained in an unorganic proximity to faith as an ideal, and, moreover, since the strict dependence on the Bible was avoided as sui?gesting salvation by works, it remained uncertain, vague, and, above all, unsystematic in its content. Their conduct remained, as Troelitsch has said of their ethical theory, a "sum of mere beginnings wh,*^ch never quite materialized"; which, "taught in particular, uncertain, and unrelated maxims", did not succeed in "working out an articulate system of conduct", but formed essentially, following the development through which Luther himself (see above) had gone, a resignation to things as they were in matters both small and great. The resignation of the Germans to foreign cultures, their rapid change of nationality, of which there is so much complaint, is clearly to be attributed, along with certain political circumstances in the history of the nation, in part to the results of this influence, which still affects all aspects of our life. The subjective assimilation of culture remained weak because it took place primarily by means of a passive absorption of what was authoritatively presented.
105. On these points, see the gossipy book of Tholuck, Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus.
106. On the quite different results of the Mohammedan doctrine of predestination (or rather predetermination) and the reasons for it, see the theological disyertation (Heidelberg) of F. Ullrich, Die Vor herb estimmungslehre im Islam u. Ch., 19 12. On that of the Jan- senists, see P. Honigsheim, op. cit.
107. See the following essay in this collection (not translated here).
108. Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, I, p. 152, attempts to dis- tinguish them for the time before Labadie (only on the basis of examples from the Netherlands) (i) in that the Pietists formed conventicles; (2) they held the doctrine of the "worthlessness of existence in the flesh" in a "manner contrary to the Protestant interests in salvation"; (3) "the assurance of grace in the tender relationship with the Lord Jesus" was sought in an un-Calvinistic manner. The last criterion applies for this early period only to one of the cases with which he deals. The idea of worthlessness of the flesh was in itself a true child of the Calvinistic spirit, and only where it led to practical renunciation of the world was it antagonistic to normal Protestantism. The conventicles, finally, had been estab- lished to a certain extent (especially for catechistic purposes) by the Synod of Dordrecht itself. Of the criteria of Pietism analysed
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in Ritschl's previous discussion, those worth considering are (i) the greater precision with which the letter of the Bible was followed in all external affairs of life, as Gisbert Voet for a time urged; (2) the treatment of justification and reconciliation with God, not as ends in themselves, but simply as means toward a holy ascetic life as can be seen perhaps in Lodensteyn,but as is also suggested by Melanch- thon [see above, note 104] ; (3) the high value placed on repentance as a sign of true regeneration, as was first taught by W. Teellinck; (4) abstention from communion when unregenerate persons partake of it (of which we shall speak in another connection). Connected with that was the formation of conventicles with a revival of prophecy, i.e. interpretation of the Scriptures by laymen, even women. That went beyond the limits set by the canons of Dordrecht.
Those are all things forming departures, sometimes considerable, from both the doctrine and practice of the Reformers. But compared with the movements which Ritschl does not include in his treatment, especially the English Puritans, they form, except for No. 3, only a continuation of tendencies which lay in the whole line of development of this religion. The objectivity of Ritschl's treatment suffers from the fact that the great scholar allows his personal attitude towards the Church or, perhaps better, religious policy, to enter in, and, in his antipathy to all peculiarly ascetic forms of religion, interprets any development in that direction as a step back into Catholicism. But, like Catholicism, the older Protestantism included all sorts and conditions of men. But that did not prevent the Catholic Church from repudiating rigorous worldly asceticism in the form of Jansenism ; just as Pietism repudiated the peculiar Catholic Quietism of the seventeenth century. From our special view-point Pietism differs not in degree, but in kind from Calvinism only when the increasing fear of the world leads to flight from ordinary economic life and the formation of monastic-communistic conventicles (Labadie). Or, which has been attributed to certain extreme Pietists by their con- temporaries, they were led deliberately to neglect worldly duties in favour of contemplation. This naturally happened with particular frequency when contemplation began to assume the character which Ritschl calls Bemardism, because it suggests St. Bernard's interpre- tation of the Song of Songs: a mystical, emotional form of religion seeking the unio mystica with an esoteric sexual tinge. Even from the view-point of religious psychology alone this is undoubtedly some- thing quite different from Calvinism, including its ascetic form exemplified by men like Voet. Ritschl, however, everywhere attempts to connect this quietism with the Pietist asceticism and thus to bring the latter under the same indictment; in doing so he puts his finger on every quotation from Catholic mysticism or asceticism which he can find in Pietist literature. But English and Dutch moralists and theologians who are quite beyond suspicion cite Bernard, Bona-
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The Protesia7jt Ethic and the - Spirit of Capitalism
Ventura, and Thomas ä Kempis. The relationship of all the Refor- mation Churches to the Catholic past was very complex and, according to the point of view which is emphasized, one or another appears most closely related to Catholicism or certain sides of it.
109. The illuminating article on "Pietism" by Mirbt in the third edition of the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, treats the origin of Pietism, leaving its Protestant antecedents entirely on one side, as a purely personal religious experience of Spener, which is somewhat improbable. As an introduction to Pietism, Gustav Freytag's description in Bilder der deutschen Vergangenheit is still worth reading. For the beginnings of English Pietism in the contemporary literature, compare W. Whitaker, Prima Institutio disciplinaque pietatis (1570).
no. It is well known that this attitude made it possible for Pietism to be one of the main forces behind the idea of toleration. At this point we may insert a few remarks on that subject. In the West its historical origin, if we omit the humanistic indifference of the En- lightenment, which in itself has never had great practical influence, is to be found in the following principal sources: (i) Purely political expediency (type: William of Orange). (2) Mercantilism (especially clear for the City of Amsterdam, but also typical of numerous cities, landlords, and rulers who received the members of sects as valuable for economic progress). (3) The radical wing of Calvinism. Pre- destination made it fundamentally impossible for the State really to promote religion by intolerance. It could not thereby save a single soul. Only the idea of the glory of God gave the Church occasion to claim its help in the suppression of heresy. Now the greater the emphasis on the membership of the preacher, and all those that partook of the communion, in the elect, the more intolerable became the interference of the State in the appointment of the clergy. For clerical positions were often granted as benefices to men from the universities only because of their theological training, though they might be personally unregener^te. In general, any interference in the affairs of the religious community by those in political power, whose conduct might often be unsatisfactory, was resented. Reformed Pietism strengthened this tendency by weakening the emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and by gradually undermining the principle of extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
Calvin had regarded the subjection of the damned to the divine supervision of the Church as alone consistent with the glory of God ; in New England the attempt was made to constitute the Church as an aristocracy of proved saints. Even the radical Independents, however, repudiated every interference of temporal or any sort of hierarchical powers with the proof of salvation which was only possible within the individual community. The idea that the glory of God requii'es the subjection of the damned to the discipline of
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the Church was gradually superseded by the other idea, which was present from, the beginning apd became gradually more prominent, that it was an insult to His glory to partake of the Communion with one rejected by God. That necessarily led to voluntarism, for it led to the believers' Church the religious community which included only the twice-born. Calvinistic Baptism, to which, for instance, the leader of the Parliament of Saints Praisegod Barebones belonged, drew the consequences of this line of thought with great emphasis. Cromwell's army upheld the liberty of conscience and the parliament of saints even advocated the separation of Church and State, because its members were good Pietists, thus on positive religious grounds. (4) The Baptist sects, which we shall discuss later, have from the beginning of their history most strongly and consistently maintained the principle that only those personally regenerated could be admitted to the Church. Hence they repudiated every conception of the Church as an institution {Anstalt) and every interference of the temporal power. Here also it was for positive religious reasons that uncondi- tional toleration was advocated.
The first man who stood out for absolute toleration and the separa- tion of Church and State, almost a generation before the Baptists and two before Roger Williams, was probably John Browne. The first declaration of a Church group in this sense appears to be the resolution of the English Baptists in Amsterdam of 1612 or 1613: "The magistrate is not to middle with religion or matters ,of con- science . . . because Christ is the King and Law-giver of the Church and conscience." The first official document of a Church which claimed the positive protection of liberty of conscience by the State as a right was probably Article 44 of the Confession of the Particular Baptists of 1644.
Let it be emphatically stated again that the idea sometimes brought forward, that toleration as such was favourable to capitalism, is naturally quite wrong. Religious toleration is neither peculiar to modern times nor to the West. It has ruled in China, in India, in the great empires of the Near East in Hellenistic times, in the Roman Empire and the Mohammedan Empires for long periods to a degree only limited by reasons of political expediency (which form its limits to-day also !) which was attained nowhere in the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Moreover, it was least strong in those areas which were dominated by Puritanism, as, for instance, Holland and Zeeland in their period of political and economic expansion or in Puritan old or New England. Both before and after the Reformation, religious intolerance was peculiarly characteristic of the Occident as of the Sassanian Empire. Similarly, it has prevailed in China, Japan, and India at certain particular times, though mostly for political reasons. Thus toleration as such certainly has nothing whatever to do with capitalism. The real question is, Who benefited by it? Of the
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
consequences of the believers' Church we shall speak further in the following article.
111. This idea is illustrated in its practical application by Crom- well's tryers, the examiners of candidates for the position of preacher. They attempted to ascertain not only the knowledge of theology, but also the subjective state of grace of the candidate. See also the following article.
112. The characteristic Pietistic distrust of Aristotle and classical philosophy in general is suggested in Calvin himself (compare Instit. Christ, II, chap, ii, p. 4; III, chap, xxiii, p. 5; IV, chap, xvii, p. 24). Luther in his early days distrusted it no less, l?ut that was later changed by the humanistic influence (especially of Melanchthon) and the urgent need of ammunition for apologetic purposes. That everything neces- sary for salvation was contained in the Scriptures plainly enough for even the untutored was, of course, taught by the Westminster Confes- sion (chap.i, No. 7.), in conformity with the whole Protestant tradition.
113. The official Churches protested against this, as, for example, in the shorter catechism of the Scotch Presbyterian Church of 1648, sec. vii. Participation of those not members of the same family in family devotions was forbidden as interference with the prerogatives of the office. Pietism, like every ascetic community-forming move- ment, tended to loosen the ties of the individual with domestic patriarchalism, with its interest in the prestige of office.
114. We are here for good reasons intentionally neglecting dis- cussion of the psychological, in the technical sense of the word, aspect of these religious phenomena, and even its terminology has been as far as possible avoided. The firmly established results of psychology, including psychiatry, do not as present go far enough to make them of use for the purposes of the historical investigation of our problems without prejudicing historical judgments. The use of its terminology would only form a temptation to hide phenomena which were immediately understandable, or even sometimes trivial, behind a veil of foreign words, and thus give a false impression of scientific exactitude, such as is unfortunately typical of Lamprecht. For a more serious attempt to make use of psychological concepts in the interpretation of certain historical mass phenomena, see W. Hellpach, Grundlinien zu einer Psychologie der Hysterie, chap, xii, as well as his Nervosität und Kultur. I cannot here attempt to explain that in my opinion even this many-sided writer has been harmfully influenced by certain of Lamprecht's theories. How completely worth- less, as compared with the older literature, Lamprecht's schematic treatment of Pietism is (in Vol. VII of the Deutsche Geschichte) everyone knows who has the slightest acquaintance with the literature.
115. Thus with the adherents of Schortinghuis's Innige Christen- dorn. In the history of religion it goes back to the verse about the servant of God in Isaiah and the 22nd Psalm.
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ii6. This appeared occasionally in Dutch Pietism and then under the influence of Spinoza.
117. Labadie, Teersteegen, etc.
118. Perhaps this appears most clearly when he (Spener !) disputes the authority of the Government to control the conventicles except in cases of disorder and abuses, because it concerns a fundamental right of Christians guaranteed by apostolic authority {Theologische Bedenken, II, pp. 81 f.). That is, in principle, exactly the Puritan stand- point regarding the relations of the individual to authority and the extent to which individual rights, which follow ex jure divino and are therefore inalienable, are valid. Neither this heresy, nor the one mentioned farther on in the text, has escaped Ritschl (Pietismus,
II, pp. 115, 157). However unhistorical the positivistic (not to say philistine) criticism to which he has subjected the idea of natural rights to which we are nevertheless indebted for not much less than everything which even the most extreme reactionary prizes as his sphere of individual freedom, we naturally agree entirely with him that in both cases an organic relationship to Spener's Lutheran standpoint is lacking.
The conventicles (collegia pietitatis) themselves, to which Spener's famous pia desideria gave the theoretical basis, and which he founded in practice, corresponded closely in essentials to the English pro- phesyings which were first practised in John of Lasco's London Bible Classes (1547), and after that were a regular feature of all forms of Puritanism which revolted against the authority ' of the Church. Finally, he bases his well-known repudiation of the Church discipline of Geneva on the fact that its natural executors, the third estate (status oeconomicus : the Christian laity), were not even a part of the organization of the Lutheran Church. On the other hand, in the discussion of excommunication the lay members' recognition of the Consistorium appointed by the prince as representatives of the third estate is weakly Lutheran.
119. The name Pietism in itself, which first occurs in Lutheran territory, indicates that in the opinion of contemporaries it was characteristic of it that a methodical business was made out of pietas.
120. It is, of course, granted that though this type of motivation was primarily Calvinistic it is not exclusively such. It is also found with special frequency in some of the oldest Lutheran Church constitutions.
121. In the sense of Heb. v. 13, 14. Compare Spener, Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 306.
122. Besides Bailey and Baxter (see Consilia theologtca, III, 6, i ; I, 47; 3, 6), Spener was especially fond of Thomas ä Kempis, and even more of Tauler — whom he did not entirely understand (op. cit.,
III, 61, I, No. i). For detailed discussion of the latter, see op. cit., I, I, I No. 7. For him Luther is derived directly from Tauler.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
123. See in Ritschl, op. cit., II, p. 113. He did not accept the repentance of the later Pietists (and of Luther) as the sole trust- worthy indication of true conversion (Theologische Bedenken, III, p. 476). On sanctification as the fruit of thankfulness in the belief of forgiveness, a typically Lutheran idea, see passages cited by Ritschl, op. cit., p. 115, note 2. On the certitudo salutis see, on the one hand, Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 324: "true belief is not so much felt emotionally as known by its fruits" (love and obedience to God); on the other. Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 335 f.: "As far as anxiety that they should be assured of salvation and grace is concerned, it is better to trust to our books, the Lutheran, than to the English writings." But on the nature of sanctification he was at one with the English view-point.
124. Of this the religious account books which A. H. Francke recommended were external symptoms. The methodical practice and habit of virtue was supposed to cause its growth and the separation of good from evil. This is the principal theme of Francke 's book. Von des Christen Vollkommenheit.
125. The difference between this rational Pietist belief in Pro- vidence and its orthodox interpretation is shown characteristically in the famous controversy between the Pietists of Halle and the orthodox Lutheran Löscher. Löscher in his Timotheus Verinus goes so far as to contrast everything that is attained by human action with the decrees of Providence. On the other hand, Francke 's con- sistent view was that the sudden flash of clarity over what is to happen, which comes as a result of quiet waiting for decision, is to be con- sidered as "God's hint", quite analogous to the Quaker psychology, and corresponding to the general ascetic idea that rational methods are the way to approach nearer to God. It is true that Zinzendorf, who in one most vital decision entrusted the fate of his community to lot, was far from Francke 's form of the belief in Providence. Spener, Theologische Bedenken, I, p. 314, referred to Tauler for a description of the Christian resignation in which one should bow to the divine will, and not cross it by hasty action on one's own respon- sibility, essentially the position of Francke. Its effectiveness as com- pared to Puritanism is essentially weakened by the tendency of Pietism to seek peace in this world, as can everywhere be clearly seen. "First righteousness, then peace", as was said in opposition to it in 1904 by a leading Baptist (G. White in an address to be referred to later) in formulating the ethical programme of his denomination (Baptist Handbook, 1904, p. 107).
126. Lect. paraenet., IV, p. 271.
127. Ritschl's criticism is directed especially against this continually recurrent idea. See the work of Francke containing the doctrine which has already been referred to. (See note 124 above.)
128. It occurs also among English Pietists who were not adherents of predestination, for instance Goodwin. On him and others compare
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Heppe, Geschichte des Pietistniis in der reformierten Kirche (Leiden, 1879), a book which even with Ritschl's standard work cannot yet be dispensed with for England, and here and there also for the Netherlands. Even in the nineteenth century in the Netherlands Köhler, Die Niederl. ref. Kirche, was asked about the exact time of his rebirth.
129. They attempted thus to counteract the lax results of the Lutheran doctrine of the recoverability of grace (especially the very frequent conversion in extremis).
130. Against the corresponding necessity of knowing the day and hour of conversion as an indispensable sign of its genuineness. See Spener, Theologische Bedenken, II, 6, i, p. 197. Repentance was as little known to him as Luther's terror es conscientice to Melanchthon.
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.
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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,
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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.
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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-
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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
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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
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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.
181. On this point the Baptist denominations, ' especially the Quakers (Barclay, Apology for the True Christian Divinity, fourth edition, London, 1701, kindly placed at my disposal by Eduard Bernstein), referred to Calvin's statements in the Instit. Christ, III, p. 2, where in fact quite unmistakable suggestions of Baptist doctrine are to be found. Also the older distinction between the Word of God as that which God had revealed to the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles, and the Holy Scriptures as that part of it which they had written down, was, even though there was no historical con- nection, intimately related to the Baptist conception of revelation. The mechanical idea of inspiration, and with it the strict bibliocracy of the Calvinists, was just as much the product of their development in one direction in the course of the sixteenth century as the doctrine of the inner light of the Quakers, derived from Baptist sources, was the result of a directly opposite development. The sharp differen- tiation was also in this case partly a result of continual disputes.
182. That was emphasized strongly against certain tendencies of the Socinians. The natural .reason knows nothing whatever of God (Barclay, op. cit., p. 102). That meant that the part played by the lex natures elsewhere in Protestantism was altered. In principle there could be no general rules, no moral code, for the calling which everyone had, and which is different for every individual, is revealed to him by God through his conscience. We should do, not the good in the general sense of natural reason, but God's will as it is written in our hearts and known through the conscience (Barclay, pp. 73, 76). This irrationality of morality, derived from the exaggerated
256
Notes
contrast between the divine and the flesh, is expressed in these fundamental tenets of Quaker ethics: "What a man does contrary to his faith, though his faith may be wrong, is in no way acceptable to God — though the thing might have been lawful to another" (Barclay, p. 487). Of course that could not be upheld in practice. The "moral and perpetual statutes acknowledged by all Christians" are, for instance, for Barclay the limit of toleration. In practice the contemporaries felt their ethic, with certain peculiarities of its own, to be similar to that of the Reformed Pietists. "Everything good in the Church is suspected of being Quakerism", as Spener repeatedly points out. It thus seems that Spener envied the Quakers this reputa- tion. Cons. Theol., Ill, 6, i, Dist. 2, No. 64. The repudiation of oaths on the basis of a passage in the Bible shows that the real emancipation from the Scriptures had not gone far. The significance for social ethics of the principle, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you", which many Quakers regarded as the essence of the whole Christian ethics, need not concern us here.
183. The necessity of assuming this possibility Barclay justifies because without it "there should never be a place known by the Saints wherein they might be free of doubting and despair, which — is most absurd". It is evident that the certitudo salutis depends upon it. Thus Barclay, op. cit., p. 20.
184. There thus remains a difference in type between the Cal- vinistic and the Quaker rationalization of life. But when Baxter formulates it by saying that the spirit is supposed by the Quakers to act upon the soul as on a corpse, while the characteristically formulated Calvinistic principle is "reason and spirit are conjunct principles" {Christian Directory, II, p. 76), the distinction was no longer valid for his time in this form.
185. Thus in the very careful articles "Menno" and "Men- noniten" by Cramer in the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, especially p. 604. However excellent these articles are, the article "Baptisten" in the same encyclopedia is not very penetrating and in part simply incorrect. Its author does not know, for instance, the Publications of the Hanserd Knolly's Society, which are indispensable for the history of Baptism.
186. Thus Barclay, op. cit., p. 404, explains that eatmg, drinking, and acquisition are natural, not spiritual acts, which may be per- formed without the special sanction of God. The explanation is in reply to the characteristic objection that if, as the Quakers teach, one cannot pray without a special motion of the Spirit, the same should apply to ploughing. It is, of course, significant that even in the modem resolutions of Quaker Synods the advice is sometimes given to retire from business after acquiring a sufficient fortune, in order, withdrawn from the bustle of the world, to be able to live in devotion to the Kingdom of God alone. But the same idea certainly occurs
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
occasionally in other denominations, including Calvinism. That betrays the fact that the acceptance of the bourgeois practical ethics by these movements w^as the worldly application of an asceticism which had originally fled from the world.
187. Veblen in his suggestive book The Theory of Business Enterprise is of the opinion that this motto belongs only to early capitalism. But economic supermen, who, like the present captains of industry, have stood beyond good and evil, have always existed, and the statement is still true of the broad underlying strata of business men.
188. We may here again expressly call attention to the excellent remarks of Eduard Bernstein, op. cit. To Kautsky's highly schematic treatment of the Baptist movement and his theory of heretical com- munism in general (in the first volume of the same work) we shall return on another occasion.
189. "In civil actions it is good to be as the many, in religious to be as the best", says, for example, Thomas Adams {Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 138).. That sounds somewhat more drastic than it is meant to be. It means that the Puritan honesty is formalistic legality, just as the uprightness which the sometime Puritan people like to claim as a national virtue is something specifically different from the German Ehrlichkeit. Some good remarks on the subject from the educational standpoint may be found in the Preuss. Jahrb., CXI I (1903), p. 226. The formalism of the Puritan ethic is in turn the natural consequence of its relation to the law.
190. Something is said on this in the following essay.
191. This is the reason for the economic importance of the ascetic Protestant, but not Catholic, minorities.
192. That the difference of dogmatic basis was not inconsistent with the adoption of the most important interest in proof is to be explained in the last analysis by the historical peculiarities of Christi- anity in general which cannot be discussed here.
193. "Since God hath gathered us to be a people", says Barclay, op. cit., p. 357. 1 myself heard a Quaker sermon at Haverford College which laid great emphasis on the interpretation of saints as meaning separate.