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.

No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice.

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise.

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

The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.

The Puritans were obsessed with the dangers of wealth.

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