Man is likewise, and this adds infinitely to his dignity, this sets him in his perfect light, man is the image of God. He is descended from him, is his offspring, and bears the visible traces of his derivation from heaven, and his communion with the Supreme Existence. His understanding is a ray of divine intelligence; his power an efflux from that of the deity; his activity something similar to that of God; his capacity of becoming constantly more perfect, is a capacity of approaching nearer to the divine nature; his immortality is a similitude of the interminable duration of the Sovereign Being, and the means of an everlasting communion with him. As often as he thinks of truth; as often as he is inclined to goodness, and brings it to effect; as often as he perceives, admires, and promotes order and harmony; as often as he spreads love, and joy, and happiness around him; so often does he think, and will, and perform, and feel, and act in a godlike manner; so often does he pursue the work of his creator and father; so often does he promote the designs of the Sovereign Being; so often does he obtain a taste of pure divine felicity; and the more he does so, the oftener he acts in this manner, the greater is his similitude with God, the brighter does the image of God shine in him, the less are we able to mistake his high descent, and to overlook the dignity of his nature. It is then that God visibly acts, as it were in him and through him ; by him he gives testimony of the truth; he instructs and reveals himself to mankind by him; by him he maintains the cause of virtue; by him he speaks comfort to the afflicted; by him he pours balm into the wounded heart; by him affords help and support to the wretched, distributes bread to the hungry, and gives strength to the weak; his world is improved by him; and through him he spreads life and joy more diffusively around. And to be such an instrument in the hand of God; to have such a similitude with him, the most perfect, the most glorious being; to approach so near to the divinity, and, in a manner, to stand in his place upon the earth; must not this confer a great, or rather the greatest dignity on man?
[Georg Joachim Zollikofer, Sermons on the Dignity of Man and the Value of the Objects Principally Relating to Human Happiness, William Tooke, tr., Thomas & Sturtevant (1807), Sermon I (p. 10). Zollikofer (1730-1788) was a Swiss-German Reformed theologian whose sermons were highly influential on Enlightenment theology and philosophy, and thus on the common moral notion of human dignity today.]