‘Calling’ and the Pursuit of Happiness

As noted by Seaver, it is not easy to define a distinctively, puritan attitude towards work, reflecting the diversity of puritanism itself; although Max Weber famously proposed the development of capitalism from Calvinist thought. More recently, David Zaret has defended Weber's thesis. He proposed that the principles Weber identified were characteristic of puritan Covenant Theology. Certainly, Venning reflects the ‘this-worldly’ concern, identified by Zaret, in his guidance to traders, as shall be explored below. On the other hand, according to C. J. Sommerville, ‘Anti-Puritans’ demonstrate more concern with behaviour in the workplace than their puritan peers. Once again, Venning illustrates the complex demarcation between puritan and anti-puritan.

Venning shares his contemporaries' horror of idleness, writing in Milke and Honey that the ‘industrious man hath no leisure to sin: the idle man hath not leisure to avoid sin’. Not all forms of employment were worthy of the name ‘vocation’, of course. For Norden similarly, it was ‘not enough for a man to have, or to desire a calling in the Church or Commonwealth; but before he undertake it, he must consider, whether it be lawfull, agreeable to the word of God, honest, or necessary for the use and societie of men’. The concern for others, not individualism, would be reflected by Venning, also.

While Collinson observes that the link between puritanism and capitalism is not easily proven nor disproven, Seaver correctly identifies a concern for ‘the proper place of economic activity in the life of the godly’. For Venning, however, work was not merely a ‘subordinate good’ but the major arena in which godliness was to be lived out. He writes: