This insightful work argues that commerce and religion grew increasingly compatible in New England from the 1630s until the middle of the eighteenth century through the transformation of theology, religious vocabulary and culture. Mark Valeri decries depictions of the religion of New England as adapting to the more powerful sway of commerce, and he contends (as the title witnesses) that religion was an equal partner in the ‘nexus’ of cultural influences. Valeri weaves his narrative, in four major parts, from the lives of significant Boston businessmen, the ledgers and diaries that they left behind, the sermons which they heard, and their own theological reflections. The study begins with the career of Robert Keayne, through which the author identifies the initial Puritan antagonism to the accumulation of wealth, usury and the mechanisms of mercantilism. This early Puritan culture was built upon the authorities of Scripture and Calvinism – neither of which explicitly endorsed a market economy – and focused on local needs. Thus, Keayne and other profit-seeking merchants of the early 1600s endured church discipline when they employed usurious practices and inflated prices that were perceived to undermine the community. Yet by the end of Keayne's life, both the economy and the theological assumptions of New England had changed. From the 1650s to the 1680s Boston merchants expanded their interests throughout the Atlantic world and they participated in its complex credit system. In the second section (chapter iii), Valeri traces the ministries of Increase Mather and Samuel Willard in relation to the experiences of John Hull, a silversmith and leading merchant. According to Valeri, natural disasters, discord within Boston religious life, and increasing warfare prompted ministers and merchants alike to look for the guidance of providence in all things, which in turn led to the reformulation of the definitions of ‘church, providence, and the civic order’ (p. 76). The assumption that God worked through institutions, including the economy, provided merchants with an endorsement of their efforts and an excuse for increased wealth. Valeri's window into early eighteenth-century society is Samuel Sewall, Hull's son-in-law, who prospered in the transatlantic British trade which was baptised by Bostonians as a providential mechanism for the good of the post-Restoration Protestant nation. In this period, commercial success – as long as acquired through ethical means and without ostentatious display – was deemed evidence of God's favour. Indeed, providence endorsed empire and economic expansion as the enemies of Roman Catholicism. Finally, Valeri portrays the intersection of rational religion, British civilisation and orderly commerce in the mid-eighteenth century and particularly in the life of Hugh Hall. Hall embodied the ‘postpuritan’ view that providence moved through the regular laws of nature and economics and that mercantile success was a reasonable expectation from virtuous endeavours and cosmopolitan civility. The eminently readable Heavenly merchandize offers copious examples from primary sources and extensive endnotes reflecting Valeri's dialogue with recent scholarship. Although the merchants are occasionally lost among the ministers, Valeri brings faces, even if they are not all sympathetic, to his story. In the end, however, Heavenly merchandize does not fully convince this reader that religion was an equal partner in the ‘nexus’ of influences. Although early Puritanism may have been formative, the narrative seems to depict religion as a step behind commerce and other cultural pressures.