The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
describe the systematic type of Christian conduct which was essential to even his form of Pietism than to justify it. He did not derive the certitudo salutis from sanctification; instead of the idea of proof, he adopted Luther's somewhat loose connection between faith and works, which has been discussed above.[123]
But again and again, in so far as the rational and ascetic element of Pietism outweighed the emotional, the ideas essential to our thesis maintained their place. These were: (1) that the methodical development of one's own state of grace to a higher and higher degree of certainty and perfection in terms of the law was a sign of grace[124]; and (2) that "God's Providence works through those in such a state of perfection", i.e. in that He gives them His signs if they wait patiently and deliberate methodically.[125] Labour in a calling was also the ascetic activity par excellence for A. H. Francke[126]; that God Himself blessed His chosen ones through the success of their labours was as undeniable to him as we shall find it to have been to the Puritans.
And as a substitute for the double decree Pietism. worked out ideas which, in a way essentially similar to Calvinism, though milder, established an aristocracy of the elect[127] resting on God's especial grace, with all the psychological results pointed out above. Among them belongs, for instance, the so-called doctrine of Terminism,[128] which was generally (though unjustly) attributed to Pietism by its opponents. It assumes that grace is offered to all men, but for everyone either once at a definite moment in his life or at some moment for the last time.[129] Anyone who let that moment pass was beyond the help of the
