"Those who preach faith, or in other words a pure mind, have always produced more popular virtue than those who preached good works, or the mere regulation of outward acts."
Sir James Macintosh, Diary (July 17, 1808)*
Although his opinion was perhaps colored by a Scotsman's protestant pride, the famous liberal Sir James Macintosh is almost certainly correct in saying that the doctrine of salvation by faith yields, at least in its first bloom, an exceptionally virtuous society. Calvinism is particularly conducive to popular virtue . It certainly puts a damper on carousing in alehouses, hooting at bawdy shows, betting on cock fights, or cavorting like Peter Pan around a maypole; but it at the same time significantly curtailed a man's chances of being cuckolded, murdered, or robbed.
Every traveler I have ever read agrees with this favorable view of Calvinist society, although some have been of the opinion that Calvinism and sobriety both depend on some third cause.
"The Calvinistic people of Scotland, of Switzerland, of Holland, and of New England have been more moral than the same classes of other nations."*
Macintosh suggests that this is because men and women governed by the doctrine of good works always end up haggling to secure salvation on the most advantageous terms. In ends in Talmudism; it ends in casuistry. It ends in legalistic dickering over how much credit one receives for each good work, and how much penalty one pays for each act that is not good but sin,
"The later mode of considering Ethics naturally gives rise to casuistry . . . ."*
I have read some casuistry, but always with feelings of mild disgust. It seems an answer to the question, "how much can a get away with?" It seems like a definition of technical virginity, or Bill Clinton's conception of truth.
"The tendency of casuistry is to discover ingenious pretexts for eluding that rigorous morality and burdensome superstition, which in the first ardor of religion are apt to be established, and to discover rules of conduct more practicable by ordinary men in the common state of the world."*
It has been said that hypocrisy is the only alternative to casuistry, since men who cannot excuse thier base conduct will naturally conceal it. Possession of a "pure mind" is no doubt superior to invention of ingenious pretexts to sail very close to the wind, but rascals have always found it easy, and have often found it convenient, to dress up and talk like the most zealous puritans.**
Setting such pharisaical puritan impostors aside, it does seem that the doctrine of faith yields more and better fruit than the doctrine of good works. The reason is that the doctrine of faith incites a desire to be good, whereas the doctrine of works incites a desire to be good enough. And from good enough the doctrine of works too easily descends to as good as can be expected.
"The casuist first let down morality from enthusiasm to reason; then lower it to the level of general frailty, until it be at last sunk in loose accommodation to weakness, and even vice."*
*) Robert James Mackintosh, ed., Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, second ed., two vols. (London: E. Maxon, 1836), vol. 1, p. 411.
**) H. Hensley, Henson Puritanism in England (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), pp. 65-69.
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