N03467:727
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.
This Dispensation has also appeared very extraordinary in the Numbers of those, on whom •e have reason to ⟨p. 16⟩hope it has had a saving Effect: We have about six hundred and twenty Communicants, which include almost all our adult Persons. The Church was very large before; but Persons never thronged into it, as they did in the late extraordinary Time:—Our Sacraments are eight Weeks asunder, and I received into our Communion about an hundred before one Sacrament, and fourscore of them at one time, whose Appearance, when they presented themselves together to make an open explicit Profession of Christianity, was very affecting to the Congregation:—I took in near sixty before the next Sacrament Day: But it must be noted that it is not the Custom here, as it is in many other Churches in this Country, to make a credible Relation of their inward Experiences the ground of Admission to the Lord's Supper.
This Dispensation has also appeared very extraordinary in the Numbers of those, on whom •e have reason to ⟨p. 16⟩hope it has had a saving Effect: We have about six hundred and twenty Communicants, which include almost all our adult Persons. The Church was very large before; but Persons never thronged into it, as they did in the late extraordinary Time:—Our Sacraments are eight Weeks asunder, and I receiv'd into our Communion about an hundred before one Sacrament, and fourscore of them at one time, whose Appearance, when they presented themselves together to make an open explicit Profession of Christianity, was very affecting to the Congregation:—I took in near sixty before the next Sacrament Day: But it must be noted that it is not the Custom here, as it is in many other Churches in this Country, to make a credible Relation of their inward Experiences the ground of Admission to the Lord's Supper.
I am far from pretending to be able to determine how many have lately been the Subjects of such Mercy; but it I may be allowed to declare any thing that appears to me probable in a thing of this nature, I hope that more than three Hundred Souls were savingly brought home to Christ, in this Town, in the space of half a Year, (how many more I don't guess) and about the same Number of Males as Females; which, by what I have heard Mr. Stoddard say, was far from what has been usual in Years past, for he observed that in his Time, many more Women were converted than Men. Those of our young People, that are on other accounts most likely and considerable, are mostly, as I hope, truly Pious, and leading Persons in Ways of Religion. Those that were formerly looser young Persons, are generally to all Appearance, become true Lovers of God and Christ, and spiritual in their Dispositions. And I hope that by far the greater part of Persons in this Town, above 16 years of Age, are such as have the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ; and so by what I heard I suppose it is in some other Places, particularly a Sunderland and South Hadley.