A Rock Pile of Rules

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“What is commonly caricatured as the ‘puritanical’ mentality is actually a mentality that can be found in the church of all ages. You can find this mindset in some of the early fathers, you can find it with Syrian ascetics, you can find it in medieval monasteries, and you can find it (after the first generation) among the Puritans. This religious type of person translates every serious call to holiness into terms it can understand, which is that of being introspective, stuffy, priggish, thin-lipped, censorious, prim, prudish, and more. Not only does it translate every serious call to holiness into this legalistic straitjacket, but it is attracted to every serious call to holiness—with the intention of burying it under a rock pile of rules.”

Chestertonian Calvinism, p. 121