Many writers of political economy in the 1660s and 1670s agreed that there were too many clergy and divinity students in England. This surplus of ministers and aspiring clerics, they argued, would better contribute to the public if they worked as productive laborers in agriculture and manufacturing. The question of whether preaching constituted labor had been a contentious theological debate in the late years of the Interregnum, and the proposals advanced by commentators like William Petty and Edward Chamberlayne to put ministers to other work assumed that clergy were comparable to profane professionals who labored for their keep. This article traces how this fraught question continued to confront schemes of political economy that otherwise sought to avoid religious controversy. In the 1670s, Christopher Wase responded to calls to limit clergy and free schools with an innovative survey and arguments drawn from empirical evidence, scriptural exegesis, and economic principles. Wase was one among other contemporaries who assigned a productive place for learning despite its irreducibility to a form of labor. His efforts thereby elevated the status of the clergy on a foundation of economic premises arrived at through engagement in theological debate.

1660 年代和 1670 年代的许多政治经济学作家都认为英国有太多的神职人员和神学院学生。他们认为，如果这些过剩的部长和有抱负的神职人员成为农业和制造业的生产性劳动者，他们将更好地为公众做出贡献。传教是否构成劳动的问题在空位期的最后几年一直是一个有争议的神学辩论，威廉·佩蒂和爱德华·张伯伦等评论家提出的让牧师从事其他工作的建议认为神职人员与为工作而劳动的世俗专业人士相当。他们的保留。本文追溯了这个令人担忧的问题如何继续面对旨在避免宗教争议的政治经济学方案。在 1670 年代，克里斯托弗·瓦斯 (Christopher Wase) 响应了限制神职人员和免费学校的呼吁，进行了一项创新调查，并根据经验证据、圣经注释和经济原理得出论据。瓦斯是同时代的人之一，他们为学习赋予了富有成效的地位，尽管它无法简化为一种劳动形式。因此，他的努力提高了神职人员的地位，其基础是通过参与神学辩论而获得的经济前提。