N03467:743
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.
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.
Persons are sometimes brought to the Borders of Dispair, 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 overborn, 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 Terrour 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 Terrours don't seem to be so sharp, when near Comfort, as before; their Convictions have not seem'd 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.
The Corruption of the Heart has discovered it self in various Exercises, in the time of legal Convictions; sometimes it appears in a great Struggle, like something roused by an Enemy, and Satan the old Inhabitant seems to exert himself, like a Serpent disturbed and ⟨p. 23⟩