“I am a son of prayer, like my name-sake Samuel the prophet; and my mother called me Samuel because, she said, I have asked him of the Lord, 1 Sam. i. 20. This early dedication to God has always been a strong inducement to me to devote myself to Him by my own personal act; and the most important blessing I have looked upon as immediate answers to the prayers of a pious mother. But, alas! what a degenerate plant am I! How unworthy of such a parent, and such a birth!” — Samuel Davies, quoted by Thomas Gibbons, Divine Conduct Vindicated, or the Operations of God Shown to be the Operations of Wisdom in Samuel Davies, Sermons on the Most Useful and Important Subjects, Vol. 1 (1766), p. lxi