N03467:270
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal…
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal salvation, viz. I. Justification by faith alone. II. Pressing into the Kingdom of God. III. Ruth's resolution. IV. The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. V. The excellency of Jesus Christ. : Delivered at Northampton, chiefly at the time of the late wonderful pouring out of the spirit of God there. / By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. ; [Three lines from Deuteronomy]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1738
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. The Scripture treats of this Doctrine, as a Doctrine of very great Importance. That there is a certain Doctrine of Justification by Faith, in Opposition to Justification by the Works of the Law, that the Apostle Paul insists upon as of the greatest Importance, none will deny; because there is nothing in the Bible more apparent. The Apostle under the infallible Conduct of the Spirit of God, thought it worth his most strenuous and zealous disputing about and defending. He speaks of the contrary Doctrine as fatal and ruinous to the Souls of Men, in the latter End of the ninth Chapter of Romans, and beginning of the tenth. He speaks of it as subversive of the Gospel of Christ, and calls it another Gospel, and ⟨p. 124⟩says concerning it, if any one, though an Angel from Heaven preach it, let him be accursed. Gal 1. 6, 7, 8, 9. compared with the following Part of the Epistle. Certainly we must allow the Apostles to be good Judges of the Importance and Tendency of Doctrines; at least the Holy Ghost in them▪ And doubtless we are safe, and in no Danger of Harshness and Censoriousness, if we only follow him, and keep close to his express Teachings, in what we believe and say of the hurtful and pernicious Tendency of any Error.—Why are we to blame, or to be cried out of, for saying what the Bible has taught us to say, or for believing what the Holy Ghost has taught us to that End that we might believe it?
2. The adverse Scheme lays another Foundation of Man's Salvation than God hath laid. I don't now speak of that ineffectual Redemption that they suppose to be universal, and what all Mankind are equally the Subjects of; but, I say, it lays entirely another Foundation of Man's actual, discriminating Salvation, or that Salvation wherein true Christians differ from wicked Men. We suppose the Foundation of this to be Christ's Worthiness and Righteousness: On the contrary, that Scheme supposes it to be Men's own Virtue; even so, that this is the Ground of a saving Interest in Christ it self. It takes away Christ out of the Place of the bottom Stone, and puts in Men's own Virtue in the Room of him: So that Christ himself in the Affair of distinguishing actual Salvation, is laid upon this Foundation. And the Foundation being so different, I leave it to every one to judge whether the Difference between the two Schemes consists only in Punctilios of small Consequence. The Foundations being contrary makes the whole Scheme exceeding Diverse and Opposite; the one is a Gospel Scheme, the other a legal one.