O, my dear hearers, let me plead and entreat you. If that would do, I would go down on my knees. If that would do, I would come down from the pulpit, I would hang on your necks, I would not let you go, I would offer myself to be trodden under your feet… Use me as you will, I am a poor sinner; and if I were to be killed a thousand ways, I suffer no more than my reward as an unprofitable servant of God. But do not trample the dear Jesus under foot; what has he done to you! Was it any harm to leave his Father’s bosom, come down and die, and plead for sinners? See him yonder hang on the tree! Behold him with his arm stretched out! See him all of a bloody gore, and in his last agony preaching love! Would you give him a fresh stab? Are they any of you here that think the sword did not pierce him enough, that they did not knock the briers and thorns into his head deep enough? And will you give him the other slash, the other thorns? Will your pierce him afresh, and go away without believing he is love? I cannot help it-I would be free from the blood of you all-Oh, that you may not damn your own souls! Do not be murderers; not like Esau, sell your birthright for a mess of pottage! May God convince and convert you; God help those that never believed, to believe; God help those that have believed, to believe more; that they may experience more and more this salvation, until faith is turned into vision and hope into fruition.
George Whitefield