Of course this attitude is a reversal of the sound European tradition which thought of the sins springing from an excess of natural sensual desire as far less repellent than the mean and despicable sins, culminating in treachery, which derive from a perversion of man’s spiritual nature.
But Protestantism went even further than this. At its very beginning, Luther, in his “Address to the German Nobility” (A.D. 1520), had proposed the non-observance of “... All saints’ days, with their carousing, except Sundays.” And no sooner had Protestantism reached its most highly developed form, under Calvin, than it began an organized warfare against popular festivals and all the decorative side of life. The zealots who were its spear-point conceived the idea that God could be worshipped only with the mind. To quote Chesterton on Puritanism (the English form of Calvinism): “It is better to worship in a barn than in a cathedral, for the specific reason that the cathedral was beautiful. Physical beauty was a false and sensual symbol coming in between the intellect and the object of its intellectual worship.... Therefore it is wicked to worship by ... dancing, or drinking sacramental wines, or building beautiful churches or saying prayers when you are half asleep.”[39]
Naturally, in the absolute divorce of beauty and holiness, it was to be expected that beauty must be thought essentially evil. Moreover, with such a system, it was necessary for the Puritans not only to get rid of beauty but also to do away with amusement so that (out of working hours) the people might have nothing to do but contemplate their theology and seek confirmation of it in their Bibles.
Of course, so bald and repulsive a fanaticism seeking to impose its tyranny upon Christian men could not, by itself, have made its way. Even the anger then running throughout Europe at the scandal given by ecclesiastical authority would have been insufficient as a cloak for such enormities. But behind the zealots were the mercantile class, into whose lap the adventurers were already beginning to pour the gold of the Indies. These “economic men” saw their chance. The masses, with their festivals and their pleasures taken from them, would not only have more time to listen to sermons, they would also have more time to work. For it was beginning to be the unspoken creed of these men that the poor man, who must gain his bread in the sweat of his brow, existed mainly that they might “get rich quick.” With their influence, the merchants furnished the driving force behind the fanatics. In England Protestantism was not long in developing into Puritanism under the powerful influence of Calvin whose God, as Wesley said, had the exact functions and attributes of the Devil.
Inspired by such a divinity, the Puritans began operations. The theatre, dancing, card playing, &c., were abhorrent to them. Moreover, and here is the essence of the whole matter, they accounted it righteousness to do their best to compel other men, indifferent or hostile to their extraordinary beliefs, to live after their sombre fashion. To the black shame of Puritanism, with its glorification of private judgment, it has never been content when in power with telling its votaries to practise its own peculiar kind of righteousness and leave others to their own consciences. In this, as in many things, the Puritan is closer in spirit to the Mohammedan than he is to the historic Church. Indeed the correspondencies between Puritanism and Mohammedans, with respect to images, ceremonies, divorce, drink, &c., deserve more study than they have received. At its utmost, the Church has claimed jurisdiction only over those of the household of faith. Puritanism seeks to impose its taboos even upon the stranger within its gates.
Puritanism contains, furthermore, an essential element of hypocrisy. To a certain extent this is due to its founder Calvin himself. For auricular confession under secrecy, or for the general confession, he could only substitute the activities of “... good men ... to be chosen from the different quarters of the city whose duty was to report evil doers to the ministers, for admonishment or exclusion from the Supper” ...[40] meaning the sacrament. Comment on such a smelling committee is needless.
Besides, the typical Puritan hypocrisy is derived from the prominence of the mercantile element present in Puritanism from the first. A wealthy man advocating Puritan taboos in order to promote asceticism among his workmen may or may not profess Puritanism, but he very seldom feels called upon to live up to it himself. Of course, with the command of privacy which wealth gives, it is easy for him to avoid open scandal.
In addition to the inveterate Puritan habit of setting members of a congregation to spy upon one another, and second, the prominence which Puritanism gives to economic motives as seen by the merchant or trader, there is also a third cause making for hypocrisy among the Puritans. That is the influence of reason (in alliance with the dimly-felt inheritance of centuries of Catholicism) demonstrating the insignificance of the transgressions which it is Puritanism’s great effort to reprove, in comparison with the baser sins. Therefore, we find many Puritans who are essentially decent people and useful members of society, all the time slyly violating the taboos, such as the drink taboo, to which they subscribe in words. Certainly all societies and religions have their hypocrites, but as certainly the hypocrisy of Puritanism excels them all.
It may be objected that it is far-fetched to assign sixteenth century Protestantism (with its English development of Puritanism) as the cause of twentieth century industrial strife. Why then did not the industrial strife develop sooner, more particularly why did it not develop in the times when the Protestant philosophy (or, if the reader prefer, the Protestant “dogma”) was far more lucidly and more intensely held? In any case, how can a system set up largely by merchants and traders be held to have caused the envy and sloth which cause and accompany our industrial strife?
The answer is that Protestantism happened to appear just at the beginning of the modern increased command over nature which for three hundred years has gone on opening up new lands for colonization and at the same time has improved the technique of agriculture and increased the quantity of the products of industry. All this has resulted in three centuries of increasing expansion unparalleled in history. At the beginning of this period the Protestant dogma had been established, to the effect that a man’s private judgment in matters of religion was superior to corporate religious authority. Inevitably, such teaching bred loneliness in the soul. But, for the most part, men still felt themselves to be members one of another, because the continuous expansion had lightened the pressure of competition between classes and individuals. Any man in the more thickly settled regions who might be dissatisfied with his lot saw the frontier beckoning. Expansion, as in the twelfth century, made for a buoyant temper in the mind, but, unlike that of the twelfth century, this temper was too contemptuous of the past (because of the sixteenth century break with tradition and also because the expansion was without precedent); whereas the twelfth and thirteenth centuries felt that they were only partly reconquering the Roman order. Hence the naive faith in “progress” as such, which culminated in the late nineteenth century, and the equally naive illusion that physical science of itself would somehow make for happiness.