Since God is the one who calls people to their work, the worker becomes a steward who serves God.

Writers themselves benefit from all helpful information about their task and methods. Readers, in turn, can have both their understanding and appreciation of literature enhanced by information about the writer's work.

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

Readers should aspire to what is excellent. They should refuse to read a substitute Bible. They should want a Bible that calls them to their higher selves - or to something higher than their current level of attainment.

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience.

Literature takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm.

In Puritan thinking, the Christian life was a heroic venture, requiring a full quota of energy.