To sum up all in a word: Nothing has separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God. All the disorder and corruption, and malady of our nature, lies in a certain fixedness of our own will, imagination, and desires, wherein we live to ourselves, are our own center and circumference, act wholly from ourselves, according to our own will, imagination and desires. There is not the smallest degree of evil in us but what arises from this selfishness, because we are thus all in all to ourselves.

William Law (1686 – 1761)