N13259:227
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 5: 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.
YOU have therefore much more need to make haste in your escape, and not to look behind you, than Lot and his wife had when they fled out of Sodom; for you are every day and every moment in danger of a thousand times more dreadful storm coming on your heads, than that which came on Sodom, when the Lord rained brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven upon them; so that it will be vastly more sottish in you to look back, than it was in Lot's wife.
2. THE destruction you are in danger of, is not only greater than the temporal destruction of Sodom, but greater than the eternal destruction of the inhabitants of Sodom. For however well you may think you have behaved yourselves, you who have continued impenitent under the glorious gospel, have sinned more and provoked GOD far more, and have greater guilt upon you, than the inhabitants of Sodom; although you may seem to yourselves, and perhaps to others, to be very harmless creatures. Mat. x. 15. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.
3. MULTITUDES while they have been looking back, have been suddenly overtaken and seized by the storm of wrath. The wrath of GOD hath not delayed, while they have delayed; it has not waited at all for them to repent, to turn about and flee; but has presently seized them, and they have been past ⟨p. 87⟩hope.—When Lot's wife looked back she was immediately destroyed, GOD had exercised patience towards her before. When she lingered at the setting out, the angels pressed her, her husband and children, to make haste. Not only so, but when they yet delayed, they laid hold on her hands, and brought her forth and set her without the city, the Lord being merciful to her. But now when notwithstanding this mercy and the warnings which had been given her, she looked back, GOD exercised no more patience towards her, but proceeded in wrath immediately to put her to death.