N13259:208
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.
WE ought not therefore to look back when fleeing out of Sodom, seeing that the destruction to ⟨p. 80⟩which it is appointed is an eternal, destruction; for this renders the destruction truly infinitely dreadful.
6. SODOM is a city appointed to swift and sudden destruction. The destruction is not only certain and inevitable, and infinitely dreadful, but it will come speedily. Their judgment lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not; 2. Pet. ii. 3. And so Deut. xxxii. 35. The day of their calamity is at hand and the things that shall come upon them, make haste.—The storm of wrath, the black clouds of divine vengeance even now every moment hang over them, just ready to break forth and come down in a dreadful manner upon them. GOD hath already whet his sword and bent his bow, and made ready his arrow on the string: Psal. vii. 12.—Therefore we should make haste and not look behind us. For if we linger and stop to look back, and flee not for our lives, there is great danger that we shall be involved in the common ruin.
THE destruction of SODOM is not only swift, but will come suddenly and unexpectedly.—It seems to have been a fair morning in Sodom, on the morning that it was destroyed. There is notice taken of the time when the sun rose that morning: Gen. xix. 23. It seems that there were no clouds to be seen, no appearance of any storm at all, much less of a storm of fire and brimstone. The inhabitants of Sodom expected no such thing: even when Lot told his sons in law of it, they would not believe it;