N13259:106
Sermons, on the following subjects
Sermons, on the following subjects; The manner in which salvation is to be sought. The unreasonableness of indetermination in religion. Unbelievers contemn the glory of Christ. The folly of looking back in fleeing out of Sodom. The warnings of Scripture in the best manner adapted to the awakening and conversion of sinners. Hypocrites deficient in the duty of prayer. The future punishment of the wicked unavoidable and intolerable. The eternity of hell-torments. The peace which Christ gives his true followers. The perpetuity & change of the Sabbath. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New-Jersey.
Hartford: printed by Hudson and Goodwin, 1780
Sermon 2: The unreasonableness of Indetermination in Religion.
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 have never come to a determination what to choose for their portion. There are but two things which GOD offers to mankind for their portion: One is this world, with the pleasures and profits of sin, together with eternal misery ensuing: The other is heaven and eternal glory, with a life of self-denial and respect to all the commands of GOD, preceding. Many as long as they live come to no settled determination, which of these to choose. They must have one or the other, they cannot have both. But they always remain in suspense, and never make their choice.
MANY have never come to a determination what to choose for their portion. There are but two things which GOD offers to mankind for their portion: One is this world, with the pleasures and profits of sin, together with eternal misery ensuing: The other is heaven and eternal glory, with a life of self-denial and respect to all the commands of GOD, preceeding. Many as long as they live come to no settled determination, which of these to choose. They must have one or the other, they cannot have both. But they always remain in suspence, and never make their choice.
THEY would fain have heaven and this world too; they would have salvation and the pleasures and profits of sin too. But considering heaven and the world, as GOD offers them, they will have neither. GOD offers heaven only with the self denial and difficulty which are in the way to it; and they are not willing to have heaven on these conditions. GOD offers the world, and the pleasures of sin to men, not alone, but with eternal misery in connection with them; and so neither are they willing to have the world. They would fain divide heaven from the holiness and self-denial which are the way to it, and from the holiness which reigns in it, and then they would be glad to have heaven. They would fain divide sin from hell, and then they would fully determine, forever to cleave to sin.