Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), was the renowned English novelist who authored the world famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719.  In volume III of A Selection from the Works of Daniel Defoe, he declared:

"In what glorious colors do the Scriptures, upon all occasions, represent these two hand-in-hand graces, faith and repentance?  There is not one mention of faith in the whole Scriptures but what is recommended in some way or other to our admiration, and to our practice; it is the foundation and the top-stone of all religion, the right hand to lead , and the left hand to support, in the whole journey of the Christian, even through this world, and into the next; in a word, it is the sum and substance of the Gospel foundation."  - A Selection from the Works of Daniel Defoe, Vol. III, p. 187.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 116.

"How incongruous is it to the decoration of the government, that a man should be punished for drunkenness and set in stocks for swearing, but shall have liberty to deny the God of Heaven, and dispute against the very sum and substance of the Christian doctrine; shall banter the Scripture, and make ballads of the Pentateuch, turn all the principles of religion, the salvation of the soul, the death of our Saviour, and the revelation of the Gospel into ridicule.  And shall we pretend to reformation of manners, and suppressing immoralities, while such as this is the general mixture of conversation?

"If a man talk against the government, or speak scurrilously of the King, he is led to the old Bailey, and from thence to the pillory, or whipping-post, and it should be so; but he may speak treason against the Majesty of Heaven, deny the Godhead of the Redeemer, and make a just of the Holy Ghost, and thus affront the Power we all adore, and yet with impunity."  - A Selection from the Works of Daniel Defoe, Vol. III, p. 102.  Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 116-117.

In his first great work, The True Born Englishman, which was a satirical poem written in 1701, Daniel Defoe quipped:

"Whenever God erects a house of prayer

The devil always builds a chapel there;

And 'twill be found, upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation."  - 1701, in his satirical poem, The True Born Englishman, Part I, Line 1.  Lewis C. Henry, Best Quotations For All Occasions (Greenwich, CONN: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1961), p. 38.  John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 318.