
“Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence (inclination to laziness), but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study or inquiry! This is the more preposterous, because Christianity, being a revelation from God, and not the invention of man, discovering to us new relations, with their correspondent duties; containing also doctrines, motives, and precepts, peculiar to itself; we cannot reasonably expect to become proficients in it by the accidental [encounters] of life, as one might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy, or a scheme of mere morals.”
… William Wilberforce (1759-1833), A Practical View, Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1829, p. 79-80