Authentic Believers

In all the revivals of the 1730’s there were many striking similarities and perhaps foremost in significance among these common features was the oneness of conviction evident in the ministers involved with respect to the nature of the preaching needed by their age. Prior to the 1730’s, the state of professing Christians in most parts of the English-speaking world appeared reminiscent of the wise and foolish virgins, ‘they all slumbered and slept’. There was small difference between the church and the world. Almost any degree of religious interest, or of adherence to the forms of religion, was considered enough to justify a person’s Christian profession, and all who grew up in the church were commonly treated as belonging to Christ, irrespective of evidence to the contrary.

- Ian Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, 124-125.