"Worldly prudence"

Mr Worldly Wiseman from Bunyan's  
The Pilgrim's Progress

An addendum to Sunday's sermon, courtesy of F.P. Harton in his book The Elements of the Spiritual Life. The book was first published in 1932 and Harton, an Anglican clergyman and sometime Dean of Wells Cathedral, obviously belonged to the High Church party of the Church of England. My second-hand copy is a 1957 reprint, but the book is apparently available in a modern edition.


He writes (pp.69-70) à propos the cardinal virtue of prudence:

There is a selfish prudence which seeks to regulate life with regard to personal comfort, ambition, success and other similar ends; there is also a worldly prudence which, though not blatantly selfish, is, nevertheless, the enemy of true religion. Whether good or bad, prudence always seeks to regulate conduct with regard to a definite end, and it is of vital importance that that end should be the right one. In the case of worldly prudence the end may frequently seem to be the right one, but its criterion is the world's standard of business, tactics, policy or what not, and it is that fact which vitiates it. It refuses to take risks or follow ideals; it is so eminently sane that the cross is to it as to the Greeks, "foolishness". In worldly affairs it is commonly successful and, for that very reason, it is in spiritual matters the Devil's favourite method of throwing dust in the eyes of the unwary. It "works", it is eminently successful up to a point, it appeals to "commonsense", its motto is "be not righteous overmuch", and it seeks to balance the morality of Christ and the world.

Christian prudence is the virtue of balance of another kind. It does not seek to reconcile Christ to the world, but man to God, and the scale whereby it weighs all things is the will of God. It directs the actions of everyday life not merely towards immediate and secondary ends, but towards the one primary end of the fulfilment of the purpose of creation.

It is therefore the supernatural directing power of the life of the virtues. Such direction is eminently necessary if the soul is to live its life aright, and it is also necessary that such illumination should come from God if the soul is not to lose itself in the complexity of life in the world as it is.

Prudence, therefore, sums up and directs all the other virtues and is the light by which the soul is guided until it comes more directly under the control of the Holy Spirit....The Wise Man remarks that "the wise in heart shall be called prudent"* and Prudence is truly the practical wisdom of Jesus; not a nice balancing of probabilities, but the discovery of the Father's will in the affairs of daily life, and the doing of that alone which is consonant with it.

* Prov. xvi. 21.

Were Dean Harton alive today, would he, I wonder, be planning to join the new Ordinariate?