N03467:742
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.
Many times Persons under great Awakenings were concerned, because they thought they were not awakened, but miserable, hard-hearted, senseless, sottish Creatures still, and sleeping upon the brink of Hell: The sense of the Need they have to be awakened, and of their comparative Hardness, grows upon them with their Awakenings; so that they seem to themselves to be very senseless, when indeed most sensible. There have been some Instances of Persons that have had as great a Sense of their Danger and Misery, as their Natures could well subsist under, so that a little more would probably have destroyed them; and yet they have expressed themselves much amazed at their own Insensibility and Sottishness, in such an extraordinary Time as it then was.
Many times Persons under great Awakenings were concerned, because they thought they were not awaken'd, but miserable, hard-hearted, senseless, so•tish Creatures still, and sleeping upon the brink of Hell: The sense of the Need they have to be awaken'd, and of their comparative Hardness, grows upon them with their Awakenings; so that they seem to themselves to be very senseless, when indeed most sensible. There have been some Instances of Persons that have had as great a Sense of their Danger and Misery, as their Natures could well subsist under, so that a little more would probably have destroyed them; and yet they have exprest themselves much amazed at their own Insensibility and Sottishness, in such an extraordinary Time as it then was.
Persons are sometimes brought to the Borders of Despair, and it looks as black as Midnight to them a little before the Day dawns in their Souls; some few Instances there have been of Persons, who have had such a Sense of God's Wrath for Sin, that they have been overborne, and made to cry out under an astonishing Sense of their Guilt, wondering that God suffers such guilty Wretches to live upon Earth, and that he doth not immediately send them to Hell; and sometimes their Guilt does so glare them in the Face, that they are in exceeding Terror for fear that God will instantly do it; but more commonly the Distresses under legal Awakenings have not been to such a Degree. In some these Terrors don't seem to be so sharp, when near Comfort, as before; their Convictions have not seemed to work so much that way, but they seem to be led further down into their own Hearts, to a further Sense of their own universal Depravity, & Deadness in Sin.