Early America
Richard Furman
"Consider what multitudes around you need converting grace; and what a change will soon be made in their state and circumstances as well as in your own, when they, with you, will be arrested by the strong hand of death, and summoned to the bar of God."
Manasseh Cutler
"It is not possible, in the nature of things, that human laws, or principles of honor, can be adequate substitutes for religion. … Infidelity is a formidable enemy to the true principles of liberty. It erases from their foundation the main pillars that can support a free government. Freedom deigns not to dwell with general immorality: It cannot be enjoyed without virtue, nor can virtue be maintained without religion."
Isaac Backus
"The scheme we oppose evidently tends to destroy the purity and life of religion; for the inspired apostle assures us, that the church is espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ, and is obliged to be subject to him in every thing, as a true wife is to her husband."
Francis Asbury
"Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honor? No, if I know my own heart. To get money? No: I am going to live to God, and to bring others so to do."
George Whitefield
"You may have orthodox heads, and yet you may have the devil in your hearts."
Jonathan Edwards
"Godliness in the heart has as direct a relation to practice, as a fountain has to a stream, or as the luminous nature of the sun has to beams sent forth, or as life has to breathing…"