“Above all, measure your progress by your improvement in love to God and man…It is the principle of love which disposes them to yield themselves up without reserve to the service of Him who has bought them with the price of His own blood…The bulk of nominal Christians…give no more than they dare withhold; they abstain from nothing but what they must practice…in short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraints…despoiled of every liberal and generous principle…But true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude.”
William Wilberforce (1759-1833) A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians with the Higher and Middle Classes contrasted with Real Christianity (Boston: Nathaniel Willis, 1815) 333-334.