Why are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without inquiry, and success without endeavour?

The whole analogy of nature inculcates a different lesson; and our own judgments in matters of temporal interest and worldly policy confirm the truth of her suggestions.

Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence; but to rouse us to exertion.

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 intercourses of life, as one might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy, or a scheme of mere morals.

—William Wilberforce
A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians (London: T. Cadell, 1830), 10.

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