Modern English edition · 1660 AD

The Gentleman's Calling

A 1660 treatise answering the assumption that a man of birth and estate has no calling at all. Allestree takes the gentleman's five advantages of education, wealth, time, authority, and reputation as talents held in trust, and works through each in turn: the duty it carries, the way it is commonly wasted, and the pleasure that follows from using it well.

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Summary

First published: 1660 AD, London, printed for Timothy Garthwait
Type: Treatise on the duties of a rank
Structure: Preface, nine sections, three private devotions
Length: About 43,000 words, a 3 hour read

The Gentleman's Calling is a 1660 treatise by Richard Allestree, published anonymously by the author of The Whole Duty of Man. It answers the assumption that a gentleman has no calling by treating his education, wealth, time, authority, and reputation as talents held in trust, each carrying a duty, a common abuse, and a pleasure.

“Men's minds are naturally the same clay; education is the potter's hand and wheel that shapes them into vessels of honor or dishonor.”

From this edition

How the argument unfolds

01
The preface. Written to gentlemen who had just lost estates, standing, and place. Allestree tells them their sins cost them more than their enemies did, and asks them to grant virtue a fair trial before condemning it as joyless.
02
No one is exempt. Man is a steward, not an owner. Idleness has no model in heaven, on earth, among animals, or in hell: "It would be slandering even the Devil himself to charge him with idleness."
03
Three callings, five advantages. A man may hold several callings at once, as a man, as a Christian, and as a gentleman. The third rests on five advantages ordinary people lack: education, wealth, time, authority, and reputation.
04
Education. It should arm the understanding against error, stock the will with motives, and bridle the affections, then show itself in civil behavior, weighty speech, and honorable work. Instead it is commonly unlearned as soon as the tutor is gone.
05
Wealth. Four duties: manage the estate, be content with it, give generously from it, and use it to prove temperance genuine, since "the man who has all the fuel for excess available, and yet will not let it catch fire, proves his sobriety to be truly his own choice."
06
Time. A portion belongs to God, a portion to the soul in study and self-examination, and a portion to the neighbor, and opportunities to help are to be sought out rather than waited for. Gaming, hawking, and sleep are shown swallowing all three.
07
Authority. Servants and tenants are wax in a patron's hands, so a master's example either forms or corrupts a household. Friendship holds the same power in a nobler form, and is meant for correction rather than mutual flattery.
08
Reputation and the duel. Rank makes counsel persuasive and example visible. The section turns into a long argument against the code of honor, which Allestree calls impious, imprudent, and finally cowardly.
09
The conclusion and devotions. The survey ends with the report Caleb and Joshua brought back from Canaan, and the reminder that Paradise itself required tending. Three private devotions follow: a confession, a thanksgiving, and a prayer.

Key themes

Stewardship. The organizing idea of the book. "God has placed man in the world not as an owner but as a steward," so every advantage is an account to be settled rather than a possession to be enjoyed.
Idleness. Treated as the vice that makes a gentleman's other faults possible, and as one nothing in creation will own: "something neither heaven, nor earth, nor even hell itself will claim as its own."
Duty as pleasure. Each section ends by arguing that the duty pays now. The gentleman's tasks are "not toils but refreshments, not yokes but crowns," and the book stakes its case on readers testing that by experience.
Charity and the poor. The rich man is called a trustee for the poor, who have "a claim on the wealth of the rich, a right to be supplied by them," and the section on wealth spends most of its length on how that claim is evaded.
Honor. Allestree sets the duelist's code against the biblical account of honor and argues that the man who fears an insult more than damnation has inverted courage: "it startles at the faintest noise, yet stands undaunted before a thunderbolt."

The Preface

1. The authority of custom carries far more weight generally than the authority of truth. So anyone who ventures to attack the one with the other may seem not to have taken to heart our Savior’s prudent warning: to sit down first and consider whether he is able, with ten thousand, to meet the one who comes against him with twenty thousand (Luke 14:31). Without doubt the odds between the champions of these two causes are just as uneven, or worse. I cannot but foresee that the present undertaking is very liable to the charge of such rashness.

2. Gentility has long since overturned Job’s saying, “Man is born to labor,” and pronounced instead to its followers the rich man’s requiem: “Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” A gentleman is now supposed to be merely a thing of pleasure, a creature sent into the world, like the leviathan into the deep, to take his pastime there (and, to complete the parallel, to devour his underlings too). So it will be no wonder if it is judged a ridiculous absurdity to attempt to define his calling, when his very essence is thought to consist in having none. Perhaps it will even be judged not only absurd but malicious, a leveling scheme meant to rob him of his birthright, to strip him of the privileges belonging to his rank, and to melt him back into the common mass from which divine providence and human laws have set him apart. But I trust the pages that follow to answer that suspicion themselves.

3. I have not been an unconcerned, still less a gloating, spectator of the decline the gentry have suffered in these recent years, and I have given them my honest sympathy. Yet I confess I think those troubles scarcely worth lamenting compared to the voluntary decline so many of them have made from true worth and virtue. It is surely a far less pitiable sight to see a gentleman stripped of his fortune by his conscience than by his own excess, or to see him fall under the executioner’s stroke than under those more shameful executioners, his lust or his intemperance. Yet I fear that if we scanned the record of martyrs even in these times of suffering, we would find that Venus and Bacchus have claimed far more victims than God and loyalty have.

4. But I confess it is beside the point to weigh these two evils, doing wrong and suffering wrong, against each other, since the latter clearly springs from the former and has no existence apart from it. Punishments are simply the results of sins, and so whatever harm lies in the effect must be charged entirely to its cause. We should regard our vice not merely as our greatest unhappiness, but as our only real unhappiness. This truth reveals the source of all our sufferings, and it is itself no less plain than they are, though, to judge by how many other causes people assign to our calamities while this one goes almost unmentioned, you would think it as hidden as the source of the Nile. Jonah is allowed to sleep securely in the ship while its more innocent cargo is thrown overboard (Jonah 1:5).

Every smallest spark from outside is blamed as the arsonist, when in truth, like Etna, our own depths send out the fire that has nearly burned us to ashes. But just as in sickness we consider finding the cause the first and most necessary step toward a cure, so it is here: conviction of our guilt is an essential preparation for relief from our troubles. We must be heavy laden in the spiritual sense, as Matthew 11:28 speaks, before we will cease to be so in the worldly sense.

5. But I fear people generally proceed in this matter more like quacks than sound physicians, applying palliatives to ease the symptoms, or perhaps opiates to numb the patient, while wholly neglecting the root of the disease. Nor do I lay this fault at the door of the gentry alone. It is plain enough that people of every sort and rank share too fully in it for any single group to claim it exclusively. But since my present purpose gives me a particular concern for the gentry, I will set the rest aside and address myself now to them alone, with this most earnest plea: that they would not treat themselves with the cruelty for which Amalek stands condemned toward Israel (Deut 25:18), striking down and destroying by their persistent sins those feeble, faint remnants of their former happiness.

Instead, let them at last seriously turn their attention to this great and urgent matter, and identify the true Achan who has so long troubled their Israel. And once that is done, the same story shows the next step: bringing him to execution, cutting off what will otherwise surely bring a fatal ruin down upon them. This cannot be put off, for the disease has already reached too dangerous a crisis to allow any delay in treatment.

6. When Egypt had suffered under a succession of miraculous plagues for holding the Israelites, Pharaoh’s own servants urged him to release them, closing their appeal with this pointed question: “Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?” God knows I may just as fittingly turn that same edge on my own appeal. For, gentlemen, are not your estates wasted, your privileges violated, your splendor eclipsed, your persons restrained, your families broken and shattered, your dignities trampled by the lowest of the common people, and are you not yourselves entirely displaced from your former standing, now made the tail who were once the head (Deut 28:44)? Is it not time yet to dismiss the sins that are the cause of all this? If you still share Pharaoh’s mind and mean to keep them, you are certainly no less stubborn than he was, and far less reasonable.

He at least had some visible advantage tempting him to keep the Israelites: they were his slaves, they labored hard at his work, they built him cities. But how different is your case. These sins are not your slaves but your taskmasters, ones you are strangely unwilling to part with, that set you to the vilest and most degrading labor and bring you no profit at all. I may fairly borrow the apostle’s challenge: “What fruit have you had of those things?” (Rom 6:21). And doubt not that the only harvest you can report will be an inventory of your miseries. We can point to many houses and cities these sins have demolished and laid waste, but we cannot point to a single structure they have built, except a Babel of confusion.

7. But alas, these ruins to your worldly fortunes are only their mild and minor offenses. Look further, and, like Ezekiel’s vision (Ezek 8:6), you will see greater and more terrible abominations still, even “the abomination of desolation” in the holy place. Your sins have laid waste not only your own houses but God’s. That beauty of his adornment, which Ezekiel 7:20 says he set in majesty, has through these detestable things of yours been exposed to spoil and pollution. We have not yet grown so used to our miseries that we have forgotten our happier condition, and how painful, how wounding it is to compare this church’s past state to its present one. When the temple was being rebuilt, the joy of that restoration could not silence the grief of those who remembered the far more glorious building that came before. They laid the foundation in tears; the text says they wept with a loud voice (Ezra 3:12).

But what tears, what cries, could be bitter or loud enough for us, who mourn not partial, incomplete repairs but total ruin and devastation, who see the materials of our Zion now reduced to dust and rubble, when we once saw them happily joined together, a city at unity with itself?

8. And so, as we remember Zion while sitting ourselves by the waters of Babylon, it is surely fitting that we sit down and weep, and bid, as those captives did (Ps 137), a solemn farewell to all joy and pleasure. Would to God that all of us, and especially you to whom I now speak, matched this sad and devout grief as fully as we share in the causes of it, so that your quarrel with sin might rise to its full height, seeing that sin robs you not only of your spiritual joys but also (which many of you feel more keenly) your worldly ones. It is your sins, I wish I could say yours alone, that have played the persecuting Saul, working such havoc on the church.

The security, profanity, and licentiousness of your prosperous days made the first breaches in her walls, and now the impenitence and stubbornness of your troubled days, like the Edomites, cry out, “Down with her, down with her, even to the ground.” Among the Jews it was a capital offense to curse a parent. Shall it now pass as a minor matter, or no crime at all, not only to curse but to destroy our common mother, and to support and maintain the very forces that defy and even invade her? Why should you not at last recall your exiled piety, and rise up in holy, fitting indignation against these her cruel, implacable enemies?

9. You cannot be said to do this while you charge only other men’s sins and leave your own out of the indictment. I do not doubt that many of you, with real displeasure (perhaps more than enough), blame the Church’s ruin on the immediate instruments: you accuse the bold intrusion of ignorant teachers of depraving her doctrine, the ambition and envy of impatient inferiors of subverting her discipline, the pride and faction of busy spirits of disturbing her peace, and the greedy avarice of sacrilegious persons of devouring her patrimony. I will not deny that these were indeed the weapons that mortally wounded her. But remember that these weapons were wielded and sharpened by more general impieties, from which they borrowed their destructive power. So to shift the guilt onto them alone is only the trick of killing Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites, which, as you know, did not acquit David of murder.

No, God knows, here lies the carcass of a poor bleeding Church. But which of you, her elders, are qualified for the purification the law required in such a case (Deut 21:8)? Which of you can say, our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it?

10. Yet the less capable you are of washing your hands in innocence, the greater your need to wash them in penitence. Since you are sons of this mother, the office of avenger of blood falls to you. Bring forth fruits of repentance by discharging that duty faithfully. Drag out these criminals who have taken sanctuary in your hearts and dwell there securely, as in a city of refuge, and hew them in pieces, as Samuel did Agag before the Lord. Your incentives to this are infinitely greater and more pressing than in other cases of murder, and the effects will just as vastly exceed those of common justice. Common justice only avenges; this can repair the harm, recall the vital spirits, and reunite the scattered limbs of this mangled body. Such power is there in sincere repentance that it can even work a resurrection.

I wish you would be ambitious to work this miracle, and by this pious wonder bring your mother back to life, weeping so long over her ashes that the moisture makes them fruitful again, until you see her rise from her urn.

11. This is your only way to reverse the decree of destruction that these Hamans, your sins, have brought about. If you neglect this, Mordecai’s warning to Esther will apply all too well to you: if God, in his unfathomable mercy, causes deliverance and relief to come to this poor desolate Church from some other place, you yourselves can expect nothing but destruction. If you have no feeling for the desolation of Zion, no pity to see her in the dust, but still choose to cherish the very impieties that brought her there, then those same sins will eventually avenge her cause and bring upon you miseries you will find impossible to escape or put out.

12. To describe your sins to you as merely the source of temporal ruin, whether private or public, is to paint far too kind and flattering a picture of them. These are only the light skirmishes before a far more dreadful slaughter, the prologue to the fatal tragedy. Take their fuller description from the apostle: “The end of these things is death,” even death eternal (Rom 6:21). It is our usual comfort against the persecutions of men that they can pursue us no further than the grave, where, as Job says, the weary are at rest. But this tyrant within our own hearts knows no such limit to its malice. It begins its worst work precisely when all other cruelties cease, tormenting endlessly with the gnawing of the worm that never dies and the burning of the fire that is never quenched.

13. Who can wonder enough at the madness that makes you hesitate to dismiss so treacherous a guest, cherishing this viper in your own chest even as you feel it eating at your insides, devouring all your temporal happiness, only as a step on the way to your heart, your more precious and eternal part? It is the common rule, even among those who profit from another’s betrayal, to love the treason but hate the traitor. Here that rule is turned upside down: you hate the treason, growing impatient with the painful consequences of your sin, yet you love the traitor and hold it in your closest embrace. The apostle warns us of the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:13), but surely this goes beyond deceit. It is enchantment, some powerful charm that can make men fall in love not only with deformity but with disease itself.

14. Yet even all the magicians of Egypt could not stand before Moses. This magic is not so irresistible that reason and religion cannot offer you countercharms able to break the spell, if only you will let them help you. Step for a moment outside the devil’s circle, out of the dizzy, driven pursuit of your sinful appetites, and give your faculties enough rest, enough breath from that hot chase, to allow a calm, considered view of other things. Then you will surely see that virtue has a far more captivating appearance, infinitely more delightful and appealing, than anything the devil’s illusions could dress your highest, most savored pleasures in. Only give her some attentive looks. Let her once in at your eyes, and leave her to find her own way to your heart. This is surely a modest request, that you would simply look at what is so lovely. What excuse could you give for refusing?

You who, to gaze on those fleeting beauties that are only your snares, hesitate at no difficulty, and will even (those of you who have no other motive) go to church for that very purpose, do not hold back your curiosity here, where alone it might actually help you. Instead, take this opportunity to make holy that part of your nature which, until now, has been left unhallowed.

15. It has been one of the devil’s most effective and dangerous tricks to plant prejudice in men’s minds against Christian practice, presenting it in the most repellent forms. He changes its shape just as he changes his own: as he transforms himself into an angel of light, so he transforms Christian practice into something dark, making it appear a state of the most dismal sadness and horror, a land opposite to all joy and cheerfulness. How much more ready people are to take the devil at his word than to take Christ at his, who declares his yoke easy and his burden light. This shows plainly in the widespread aversion to piety among those who have never even tried it, who instead pick up vague, confused prejudices against it and hold onto them as firmly as if they were the fruit of years of costly experience. These prejudices, I fear, have taken deepest root in the richest soil.

They seem to flourish nowhere more than among you of the highest rank, yet for that very reason you are more obligated than anyone else to root them out, since they involve a gross injustice that any thoughtful mind should be ashamed of.

16. You would readily call any judge both corrupt and shameless who condemns a person whose case he never heard. Yet if you reflect, you will find your own verdict rebounding on yourselves, with a “you are the man,” for this is plainly your own case. It is time, then, for you to be at least as just to your own reputation, if not to virtue itself, as to withdraw the condemning sentence you have passed on her, and to grant her at least the outward form of a fair trial. But you cannot do this merely by hearing the tongues of men and angels speak in her defense. No one but virtue herself can plead her own cause. You must welcome her into your company and live with her closely enough to observe her, before you pass judgment on her.

In short, if you truly wish to become competent judges of whether a virtuous life is pleasant or dismal, take it up yourselves, and let your own experience inform you.

17. I cannot think this age so far gone as to doubt that many particular people among you have made this experiment themselves. To their testimony I confidently appeal, and I do not doubt they will turn from judges into advocates and recommend it to you. Surely you will have no reason here to set aside your usual privilege of being tried by your peers, or to object to the judgment of those who, standing in circumstances equal to your own, must understand your strongest temptations to vice, from which alone all the apparent difficulties and discomforts of virtue arise.

18. It would take many volumes to describe all the distinct advantages toward a pleasant life that are wrapped up in this one comprehensive blessing. I will point to just one, since it particularly relates to the treatise that follows: it furnishes you with a steady succession of agreeable and cheerful pursuits. Virtue is busy and active by nature. Just as it opposes every kind of vice in its various operations, so in its very constitution it bears an avowed hostility to that one fertile breeding-ground of most other sins: idleness. Rescuing you from idleness is no small benefit. You may claim, as a considerable part of your inheritance, the right to live and do nothing, and you hold tightly to that claim. Yet it is perfectly plain that what you defend as your privilege you yourselves feel as a burden.

So much so, in fact, that to escape it you throw away wealth, health, soul, and everything else for company, and busy yourselves in the most ruinous ways rather than endure being idle. You even disprove your own pretense to ease by those laborious, toilsome vices which you are forced to call pleasures in order to make them bearable, vices that have no real claim to that name except that they keep you occupied.

19. What kinder service, then, could possibly be done for people in this condition than to show them how they may free themselves of this load without taking on a worse one? I mean the guilt of those sins which, like Rehoboam turning whips into scorpions, people now resort to as their only means of relief. A Christian life will do exactly this for you. It will constantly supply you with innocent diversions, and far more than that, it will give you work so excellent and worthy of the dignity of your nature, so noble and fitting to the splendor of your rank, so thoroughly agreeable to the aims of rational people, that you will have cause to agree with our Church that God’s service is perfect freedom.

20. I will not attempt to give you a detailed account of every one of these pursuits. The precepts of the Gospel, which assign your tasks, tell you enough already about their nature and excellence. My whole plan is contained in that one instruction that directs each person to attend faithfully to the calling in which God has placed him. So I mean to treat only those particular duties that fall to you as gentlemen. In doing so I will show you that, considered in that light, you do have a calling, freeing you from the reproach and misery of being unprofitable burdens on the earth. I will also show you that this calling, far from implying any real toil or discomfort, is simply an art of refining and elevating your pleasures, making them more delightful and exquisite. Attended to properly, it will make good, in earnest, your mistaken claim to a life of sensuality and delight.

Section 1: Of Business and Callings in General

1. A man who through laziness and poor planning wastes and consumes what is properly his own falls under the blunt charge of folly, and usually under the sharper penalty of poverty and want. But a man who is merely a deputed manager, if he neglects what has been entrusted to him, is liable to a heavier weight of blame and discipline. The weakness of the first may meet with some pity, but the faithlessness of the second draws universal contempt, and is often severely judged by people who, if they reflected honestly, would find themselves guilty of the very same fault.

2. God has placed man in the world not as an owner but as a steward. He has put many excellent things into man’s possession, but only in trust, to be not merely kept but put to work, and developed by use for the benefit of the true owner. Yet in this God deals as a most generous Master. He not only promises transcendent future rewards for faithfulness, but even now grants a generous provision (as to the ox that treads out the corn), weaving his own interest so closely with man’s duty that fulfilling that duty is man’s only path to happiness even in this life.

3. This is certainly the condition of mankind in general. Every rational person has something of this kind entrusted to him. No one with understanding, whether of higher or lower capacity, lacks some variety of abilities, together with the driving power that should put them to work. Whoever has not been excluded from receiving such gifts cannot claim exemption from the tasks they require. He is strictly obligated to develop what he has received, to bring in fruit to the granary, both for his own account and joy when the harvest is reckoned, and for the glory of God, from whom alone he derives, and must credit, the seed, the watering, and the increase itself. The person who manages his responsibilities properly on these grounds, and attends diligently to this duty, will find himself so actively engaged that he will have little reason to suspect himself neglected or forgotten by God and nature, or placed in the world without a calling.

4. No rank or individual of humankind can claim exemption from what is required of all people. So until those whom birth, education, wealth, and common usage have made known by the title of gentlemen decide to strike out the last part of that title and deny that they are men (as readily as they deny the duty that comes with being one), they must abandon this error and admit that they share in this common obligation.

5. Even if they could imitate the Prince of the morning enough to rise to the rank he was willing to abandon, that is, to ascend above humanity and take on the nature of angels, this obligation would still pursue and overtake them there. Among all the ranks of that divine hierarchy, they would not find a single patron or model of idleness. The spiritual nature of angels makes them more agile and active, and that activity is continually spent using the divine gifts they have received, to the glory of God who gave them. This is true not only as they join the heavenly choir that ceaselessly sings God’s praises, but in the more laborious and humble work of serving as ministering spirits, even to those who are, in nature and innocence, far beneath them. They do this with perfect eagerness and joy, counting it their greatest honor to be so employed.

As Gerson says, their power to govern the world is not as fitting a theme for their praise-songs as the greater dignity of receiving and carrying out God’s commands, a striking sign of how differently honor is measured between the courtiers of heaven and those of earth, between the citizens of that refined region and this coarse one. So the gentleman’s situation is plain: whether he looks level at creatures who share his own nature, or looks upward to the glorious spirits surrounding God’s throne, he will find in all the records of earth or heaven no charter for laziness, no clause exempting him from this universal law.

6. Suppose this man of rank were willing to give up his birthright and become like the beasts that perish (Ps 49:20); suppose he would gladly renounce all the real privileges of being human in pursuit of this one imagined privilege of being a gentleman, choosing Nebuchadnezzar’s punishment for himself. Even then, neither field nor forest would give him shelter, nor offer him a single companion to support or even excuse his rebellion against this divine decree. They would instead be his teachers, instructing him to obey it. What rank of animal, even among the most savage, can be accused of failing to use the faculties it was given? Are they not generally in constant, ordered motion toward the purposes for which they were created, continually exercising the powers with which they are equipped?

Some of them use these powers so skillfully for all their necessary purposes that it has raised the question whether they act by instinct or by reason, by imagination or by judgment. Pythagoras clearly sides with reason for them, and Aristotle, though less generous to them, seems in one remark to concede the point, admitting that in creatures he says lack reason, imagination fills reason’s place. I need not take sides in that debate. Whatever their faculties or gifts may be, no one doubts that they use them, or that their unbroken obedience to the law of their creation reflects proportionate glory on their Creator.

7. Descending one degree lower still, even the lifeless creation joins this divine harmony. Every part of it performs its office, never failing to exercise the active qualities God has placed in it. The sun has received the power to warm and enliven earthly bodies, and it does not withhold its rays but freely spreads and shares them. The earth has received the power to make things fruitful, giving sap and greenness to what grows on it, and it does not hold back that life-giving moisture but, like a tender nurse, sends it out generously to all that look to her for nourishment. All the other parts of this great body act in the same proportionate way. That all this serves to display the glory of the almighty wisdom that has arranged them in so excellent an order is plain without need of any special lens.

When the Queen of Sheba saw the magnificence and order of Solomon’s court, she burst out in wonder at his wisdom. Surely a far greater occasion is given to all who contemplate the wonderful order of the universe, moving the soul to praise and adore the divine mind who arranged it, as we see so often in the sublime raptures of the psalmist, who never better proves his right to be called the sweet singer of Israel than on this exalted theme.

8. Can it really be imagined a privilege and honor to be the one discordant string in this great instrument, to disrupt this divine music and become the sole useless, unprofitable part of creation? Should those whom God has made only a little lower than the angels degrade their own nature below even the lowest rank of creatures? Should this shabby self-abasement, which is not humility but meanness, be regarded with respect and pursued as an advancement? This is such an absurdity that it needs nothing to refute it but simply to be considered honestly. So if gentlemen would reflect soberly, there is little doubt they would at once give up their claim to, and their high opinion of, this so shameful piece of “honor,” this so degrading kind of “exaltation.”

9. We can lower our thoughts only one step further, and that is into the bottomless pit. From there, surely no one would wish to draw an example, yet even that dark region could not supply one. Though it is true that those accursed spirits differ from the earlier examples in the purpose of their actions, they do not differ in their activity itself. Theirs is a busy existence, though bent to an evil end. Satan goes to and fro in the earth (Job 2:2), and he walks about seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet 5:8). He employs all his faculties too, making full use of whatever sharpness and skill his nature or experience have given him, toward the end he pursues. It would be slandering even the Devil himself to charge him with idleness.

Idleness is a sin that yields him such a rich harvest that he may well plant and nurture it in human nature, yet he does not do such violence to his own nature as to become an example of it himself.

10. From this we can judge how scandalous and shameful a thing idleness is, something neither heaven, nor earth, nor even hell itself will claim as its own. It is like an illegitimate child, disowned by everyone. How unreasonable, indeed how disgraceful, would it then be for those to adopt this rejected offspring and nurse this vice in their own hearts who, above all others, have the greatest and most particular obligation to detest it, having received the most talents that call them to action. And that this is precisely the gentleman’s condition, a brief examination will be enough to show.

Section 2: Of Varieties of Callings

1. The obligation to have a calling rests on undeniable ground: all people have received some abilities from God to put to use, some talents to improve. It follows by every law of reasoning that those who have received the most can least reasonably claim exemption. Instead, they must be acknowledged to lie under stronger and more numerous obligations. The general duty resting on everyone spreads into several branches, according to the quality and proportion of what each person has received.

2. This is why callings and occupations become so varied, not only through people’s free choices but through the direction and assignment of God and nature itself. One man is given an ability that qualifies him for one sort of calling, while another is marked out by his own distinct gifts for another. This is also why callings that are separate in different people may come together in one man: when the various abilities that make up those callings converge in him, the duties that come with them converge as well. This can be seen in most people, who, besides the general powers common to all humanity, receive certain particular abilities suited to some special purpose. So they are bound not only to the exercises common to their entire species, but also to those for which they are individually equipped.

Those whom God has called to Christianity are thereby empowered for what that holy calling requires, so the calling of Christian is added on top of whatever natural or civil obligation already lay on them. In this way the same man may hold various callings according to his different capacities, much as we distinguish the soul into vegetative, animal, and rational functions, though strictly speaking these are only different operations of the same soul. In truth, what we call distinct callings may really be one comprehensive calling, stretching itself into the several faculties of the person.

3. I need not try to prove the phrase imprecise. It serves my purpose well enough to let these be treated as distinct callings. My aim in doing so is to show those unwilling to hear of any calling at all that they are bound by more than one. They have whatever belongs to them as human beings, and they also have what belongs to them as Christians. And they have a further calling belonging to them as gentlemen, meaning those distinguished from common people, not merely by empty names and airy titles, but by real gifts, granted to them by God as distinct advantages, fertile and productive abilities meant to bring him the harvest of honor and glory he expects.

4. There is little doubt that many gentlemen need reminding about the first two of these callings. The duties even of ordinary humanity, let alone of Christians, have fallen so far out of practice that they seem to have fallen out of memory too. When people do think of them at all, it is with the same scorn shown toward the outdated clothing of our forefathers, treated as fit only to dress a man up for laughter and ridicule. But that would be too vast a subject, and it has already been well covered by the pious labors of others. My purpose, then, is not to treat those two callings directly, except where they happen to be linked and interwoven, as in many respects they are, with the third calling, that of the gentleman.

5. Gentlemen need not fear that I mean to put a spade or hammer in their hands and demand they become farmers or tradesmen. My whole aim rests on their distinction from such men, specifically in whatever respects, whether in kind or degree, they surpass them. That such respects exist, they need no reminder, at least not when the question concerns only the reverence and respect owed to them by their social inferiors. In such cases everyone can draw up long lists of their advantages and privileges (written, like Ezekiel’s scroll, within and without), and stretch them to claim the very last measure of tribute they can possibly demand. But let them remember that God is as jealous of his honor as they are of their own.

Just as they turn their advantages into instruments for drawing glory from those beneath them, they must also reflect and return that glory to the divine power above them, who granted those advantages for that very purpose and will not finally be deceived. If they disappoint his primary intention, that his grace be glorified through their faithful management of those talents, they will not escape his secondary intention, that his justice be magnified in the fitting judgment of such slothful servants. If they deny him the more welcome satisfaction of granting rewards, they cannot rob him of the lesser satisfaction of executing judgment.

Questions

Who wrote The Gentleman's Calling?

Richard Allestree, a Church of England clergyman who was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and Provost of Eton College. The book appeared anonymously in London in 1660 AD, printed for Timothy Garthwait, and was credited on its title page to the author of The Whole Duty of Man.

What is The Gentleman's Calling about?

It argues that a gentleman does have a calling. Allestree lists the five advantages that set gentlemen apart from other men and treats each as a talent held in trust, showing the duty attached to it, how it is commonly wasted, and the satisfaction that comes from using it well.

What are the five advantages of a gentleman?

Education, wealth, time, authority, and reputation. Allestree gives each its own section, and chooses them because they are advantages "so obvious that everyone acknowledges them," so no reader can dispute the conclusion he draws from them.

Why does the book argue against dueling?

Because the section on reputation has to deal with the code of honor that governed it. Allestree argues that dueling defies God's own account of honor, that its rules are absurd enough to belong in Don Quixote, and that fighting to escape an insult is cowardice rather than courage.

Is there a companion volume for women?

Yes. The Ladies' Calling, by the same author, applies the same method to women, and is available in modern English at /books/the-ladies-calling-modern-translation/.

What are the Private Devotions at the end?

Three prayers issued with the treatise and listed in its own table of contents: a confession, a thanksgiving, and a prayer. Each is written in the voice of a man reviewing the advantages he has received and the account he owes for them.

About the author

Richard Allestree

Richard Allestree was a Church of England clergyman who served as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford and later as Provost of Eton College. He is generally identified as the author of The Whole Duty of Man and the devotional books issued alongside it, all of them published anonymously in London.

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The Gentleman's Calling

This book, and 250+ more, free to read

Summary

How the argument unfolds

Key themes

The Preface

Section 1: Of Business and Callings in General

Section 2: Of Varieties of Callings

Questions

Richard Allestree

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