N13259:175
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
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.
1. HEREBY you may be convinced of the greatness of your guilt. Consider how great and excellent that person is, whom you thus set at nought. Contempt of any person is heinous in proportion to the worthiness and dignity of the person contemned. Though we are but men, and worms of the dust, and very vile, sinful creatures; yet we take it grievously, when we are despised. Consider how you yourselves are ready to resent it, when any of your neighbours ⟨p. 67⟩seem to •light you, and set light by what you say and do, and to make no account of it, but to treat you as if you were good for nothing, or not worth minding. Do you take this well of your neighbours and equals, when you observe any thing of this nature? are you not ready to look upon it with resentment, to think very ill of it, and to judge that you have great cause to be offended?
BUT if it be such a crime to despise you and set you at nought, what is it to set at nought the eternal infinitely glorious son of GOD, in comparison with whom you and all nations are nothing and less than nothing and vanity? You dislike it much to be contemned by your equals; but you would take it yet more grievously to be despised by your inferiors, by those whom one every account you much excel.—What a crime is it then for a vile, sinful worm, to set at nought him who is the brightness of the glory of the king of kings!
BUT if it be such a crime to despise you and set you at nought, what is it to set at nought the eternal infinitely glorious son of GOD, in comparison with whom you and all nations are nothing and less than nothing and vanity? You dislike it much to be contemned by your equals; but you would take it yet more greivously to be despised by your inferiors, by those whom one every account you much excel.—What a crime is it then for a vile, sinful worm, to set at nought him who is the brightness of the glory of the king of kings!