The Puritan wanted to be a person with a vocational calling; we must be. For to the extent that asceticism moved out of the monastic cell and was carried over into the lif e of work in a vocational calling, and then commenced to rule over this-worldly morality, it helped to do its part to build the mighty cosmos of the modern economic order - namely, an economy bound to the technical and economic conditions of mechanied, machine-based production. This cosmos today determines the style of life of all individuals born into this grinding mechanism, and not only those directly engaged in economically productive activity. It does so with overwhemling force - and perhaps it will continue to do so until the last ton of fossil fuel has burnt to ashes. The concern for material goods, according to Baxter, should lie on the shoulders of his saints like “a lightweight coat that one can throw off at any time.” Yet fate allowed this coat to become a steel-hard casing. To the exent that asceticism undertook to transform and influence the wolrd, the world’s material goods acquired an increasing and, in the end, inescapable power over people - as never before in history.