N03467:480
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.
5. Consider how often you have refused to hear God's Calls to you, and how just it would therefore be, if he should refuse to hear you when you call upon him. You are ready, it may be, to complain that you have often prayed, and earnestly begged of God to show you Mercy, and yet have no Answer of Prayer: One says, I have been constant in Prayer for so many Years, and God has not heard me. Another says, I ha•• done what I can; I have prayed as earnestly as I am able; I don't see how I can do more; and it will […] hard if after all I am denied. But do you consider how often God has called, and you have denied him? God has called earnestly and for a long Time; he has called, and called again, in his Word, and in his Providence, and you have refused. ⟨p. 216⟩You was not uneasy for Fear you should not show Regard enough to his Calls. You let him call as loud, and as long as he would; for your Part, you had no Leisure to attend to what he said; you had other Business to mind; you had these and those Lusts to gratify and please, and worldly Concerns to attend; you could not afford to stand considering of what God had to say to you• When the Ministers of Christ that he sent on that Errand, have stood and pleaded with you, in his Name, Sabbath after Sabbath, and have even spent their Strength in it, how little was you moved by it! It did not alter you, but you went on still as you used to do; when you went away, you returned again to your Sins, to your Lasciviousness, to your vain Mirth, to your Covetousness, to your Intemperance, and that has been the Language of your Heart and Practice. Exod. 5. 2. Who is the Lord, that I should obey his Voice? Was it no Crime for you to refuse to hear when God called? And yet is it now very hard that God don't hear your earnest Calls, and that though your calling on God be not from any Respect to him, but merely from Self-Love? The Devil would beg as earnestly as you, if he had any Hope to get Salvation by it, and a thousand Times as earnestly, and yet be as much of a Devil as he is now. Are your Calls more worthy to be heard than God's? Or is God more obliged to regard what you say to him, than you to regard his Commands, Counsels and Invitations to you? What can have more Justice in it than that, in