William Nevins

Nevins was an American minister and religious writer whose sermons and reflections circulated widely in the northeastern United States. He died in 1835; the following year his papers were gathered into Select Remains of the Rev. William Nevins, with a Memoir (New York: J. S. Taylor, 1836), and it is on page 383 of that posthumous volume that Quote Investigator finds the earliest form of this saying. He is not a famous man — which is precisely why the line kept getting reassigned to famous ones.