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 disappointment", is the philosophy of Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 11). Baily (Praxis pietatis, p. 176) furthur recommends 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 characteristic 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 Spangenburg 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 Hoornbeek's remarks (Theologia practica, I, p. 882) on the duty to love one's enemy: "Denique hoc magis nos ulicisimur, quo proximum, inultium nobis, tradimus ultori Deo—Quo quis plus se ulscitur, eo minus id pro ispo agis 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 interpretation 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 consciousness. This accounts for certain characteristic features of the social organization of peoples with a Puritan past even today.
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, led by States General of the Netherlands. The result was always the formation of conventicles (as after 1614).
29. On Bunyan compare the biography of Froude in the English Men of Letters series, also Macaulay's superficial sketch (Miscel. Works, II, p. 227). Bunyan was indifferent to the denominational distinctions within Calvinism, but was himself a strict Calvinistic Baptist.
