N03467:529
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.
Thus have many of you been opposite to the Salvation of others, that stand […] Necessity of it […] you• You have been against […] being delivered from everlasting Misery, that can bear it no better than you; ⟨p. 233⟩not because their Salvation would do you any Hurt, o• their Damnation help you, any otherwise than as it would gratify that vile Spirit that is so much like the Spirit of the Devil, who, because he is miserable himself, is unwilling that others should be happy. How just therefore is it that God should be opposite to your Salvation! If you have so little Love or Mercy in you, as to begrudge your Neighbours Salvation, whom you have no cause to hate, but the Law of God and Nature requires you to love, why is God bound to exercise such infinite Love and Mercy to you, as to save you at the Price of his own Blood, that he is no Way bound to love, but that have deserved his Hatred a thousand & a thousand Times? You are not willing that others should be converted, that have behaved themselves injuriously towards you; and yet will you count it hard if God don't bestow converting Grace upon you, that have deserved ten thousand Times as ill of God, as ever any of your Neighbours have of you? You are opposite to God's showing Mercy to these and those, that you think have been vicious Persons, and are very unworthy of such Mercy.—Is others Unworthiness a just Reason why God should not bestow Mercy on them? And yet will God be hard, if notwithstanding all your Unworthiness, & the Abominableness of your Spirit & Practice in his Sight, he don't show you Mercy? You would have God bestow liberally on you, and upbraid not; but yet when he shows Mercy to others, you are ready to upbraid, as soon as you hear of it; you immediately are thinking with your self how ill they have behaved themselves; and it may be your Mouths on this Occasion are open, enumerating and aggravating the Sins they have been guilty of.—You would have God bury all your Faults, and wholly blot out all your Transgressions; but yet if he bestows Mercy on others, it may be you will take that Occasion to •ake up all their old Faults that you can think of.—You don't much reflect on & condemn your self, for your Baseness & unjust Spirit towards others, in your Opposition to their Salvation; you don't quarrel with yourself, and condemn your self for this;