Jonathan Edwards, pastor-theologian (1703-1758)

“What they are principally taken and elevated with, is not the glory of God, or beauty of Christ, but the beauty of their experiences.

They keep thinking with themselves, ‘What a good experience is this! What a great discovery is this! What wonderful things have I met with!’

And so they put their experiences in the place of Christ, and his beauty and fullness; and instead of rejoicing in Christ Jesus, they rejoice in their admirable experiences: instead of feeding and feasting their souls in the view of what is without them, viz. the innate, sweet, refreshing amiableness of the things exhibited in the gospel, their eyes are off from these things, or at least they view them only as it were sideways; but the object that fixes their contemplation, is their experience; and they are feeding their souls, and feasting a selfish principle with a view of their discoveries: they take more comfort in their discoveries than in Christ discovered.” -Jonathan Edwards

-Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards, pg. 138