The Puritan God was the Celestial Improver with unrelenting demands for more. As Baxter ominously declared in his Christian Directory, “if God shew you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way”—without, of course, “wrong to your soul or to any other”—then “if you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your Calling, and you refuse to be God’s Steward.” Of course, Baxter cautioned, we may not pile up “riches for our fleshly ends”; but “in subordination to higher things,” the pursuit of wealth was justified, even mandatory.
