God has given to man some things in common with animals, such as: his outward senses, his bodily appetites, a capacity of bodily pleasure and pain, and other animal faculties: and some things he’s given him superior to the beasts, the chief of which is an ability of understanding and reason. Now God never gave man these capabilities to be subject to those which he has in common with the animals.

This would be great confusion, and equivalent to making man to be a servant to the beasts. On the contrary, he has given those inferior powers to be employed in subserviency to man’s understanding; and therefore it must be a great part of man’s principal business to improve his understanding by acquiring knowledge. If so, then it will follow, that it should be a main part of his business to improve his understanding in acquiring divine knowledge, or the knowledge of the things of divinity: for the knowledge of these things is the principal end of this capability. God gave man the faculty of understanding, chiefly, that he might understand divine things.

—Jonathan Edwards