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 Herrnhut 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 fundamentally 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 traditionalism 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 Herrnhut community as an institution for salvation. See Ritschl's criticism, op. cit., III, 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., III, 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,
