What we call service to God is done naturally much against our wills; it is not a delightful food, but a bitter potion; we are rather haled, than run to it. There is a contradiction of sin within us against our service… Our hearts are unwieldy to any spiritual service of God; we are fain to use violence with them sometimes… Man’s nature, being contrary to holiness, hath an aversion to any act of homage to God, because holiness must at least be pretended; now as men are against the truth of holiness, because it is unsuitable to them, so they are not friends to those duties which require it, and for some space divert them from their beloved lusts. The word of the Lord is a yoke, prayer a drudgery, obedience a strange element.
- Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Vol. 1), p. 112
