N13259:197
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 4: The Folly of looking back, in fleeing out of Sodom.
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. THAT Sodom is a city full of filthiness and abominations. It is a filthy and abominable city; it is full of those impurities that are worthy to be had in the utmost abhorrence and detestation by all. The inhabitants of it are a polluted company, they are all under the power and dominion of hateful lusts. All their faculties and affections are polluted with those vile dispositions that are unworthy of the human nature, that greatly debase it, that are exceedingly hateful to GOD and dreadfully incense his anger. Every kind of spiritual abomination abounds in it: in Sodom there is all filthiness that can be thought of. There is nothing so hateful and abominable but that there it is to be found and there it abounds.
SODOM is a city full of devils and all unclean spirits: there they have their rendezvous, and there they have their dominion. There they and those that are ⟨p. 76⟩like unto them, do sport and wallow themselves in filthiness; as it is said of mystical Babylon, Rev. xviii. 2. Babylon—is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird.—Who would be of such a society? who would not flee from such a city with the utmost haste, and never look back upon it, and never have the least inclination of returning, or having any thing to do there any more?
SOME in Sodom may seem to carry a fair face and make a fair outward show; but if we could look into their hearts, they are every one altogether filthy and abominable. We ought to flee from such a city, with the utmost abhorrence of the place and society, with no desires to dwell longer there, and never to discover the least inclination to return to it; but should be desirous to get to the greatest possible distance from it, that we might in no wise be partakers in her abominations.