'Weber's famous study of the 'affinity' between the rise of rational bourgeois capitalism in England and Calvinist-Puritanism has for almost a century stirred up a cloud of dust and misunderstanding. Toward the end of settling some of the dust no one has previously made such an acute analysis of pre-revolutionary England as has David Little. On the one hand, he has applied and extended Weber's method, especially in the sphere of the law-monopoly and corporation law-thus filling a gap in these studies. He has also delineated the sharply conflicting conceptions of social order and of legitimation. On the the other hand, Little has given an invaluable critical survey of the extensive literature of Weber's thesis. This is a landmark in the study of the complex and varying relations between religion and society.' -James Luther Adams, Harvard Divinity School