“It is now no less acknowledged than heretofore, that prosperity hardens the heart…Prosperity and luxury, gradually extinguishing sympathy, and puffing up with pride, harden and debase the soul…
Let them [Christians] be active, useful, generous toward others; manifestly moderate and self-denying. Let them ashamed of idleness, as they would be of the most acknowledged sin. When Providence blesses them with affluence, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity; and, without sordidness or absurdity, shew by their modest demeanor, and by their retiring from display, that, without affecting singularity, they are not slaves to fashion; that they consider it as their duty to set an example of moderation and sobriety, and to reserve for nobler and more disinterested purposes, that money, which others selfishly waste in parade, and dress, and equipage. Let them envince, in short, a manifest moderation in all temporal things; as becomes those whose affections are set on higher objects than any which this world affords…”
William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in 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) 188, 352