earnest - A Puritan Critique of Business Ethics ? Reiterations

It has become an axiom of modern business that the goal of business is to make as much profit as possible and that any type of competition or selling practice is acceptable as long as it is legal.? The Puritans would not agree.? For one thing, they looked upon business as a service to society.? ?We must, therefore, think,? wrote John Knewstub, ?that, when we come to buying and selling, we come to witness our love towards our neighbor by our well-dealing with him in his goods.?? William Perkins said, ?The end of a man?s calling is not to gather riches for himself?but to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men.?

Nor would the Puritans agree with modern methods of competition or profiteering.? When citizens in Boston complained that Robert Keayne charged excessive prices, the magistrates fined him two hundred pounds, and he very nearly found himself excommunicated from the church.? John Cotton used the trial to lay down some business principles in a public lecture on economics.? Cotton denounced as false the following premises: ?That a man might sell as dear [expensively] as he can, and buy as cheap as he can?That he may sell as he bought, though he paid too dear, etc., and though the commodity be fallen, etc.? That as a man may take advantage of his own skill or ability, so he may another?s ignorance or necessity.?

In England, John Knewstub showed what a gulf lies between the Puritans and modern commercial practices when he wrote disparagingly of businessmen who: ?come to buying and selling as it were to the razing and spoiling of some enemy?s city?, where every man catcheth, snatcheth, and carrieth away whatsoever he can come by.? And he is thought the best who carrieth away the most?But the Holy Ghost will bring us to another trial of our love.?

From: ?That Which God Hath Lent Thee? by Leland Ryken, in Christian History, Volume 7, Number 3, Issue 19 (1988), p. 16.

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