N13259:231
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.
4. IF you look back and live long after it, there will be great danger that you will never get any further. The only way to seek salvation is to press forward with all your might, and still to look and press forward, never to stand still or slacken your pace.—When Lot's wife stopped in her flight, and stood still in order that she might look, her punishment was that there she was to stand forever, she never got any farther; she never got beyond that place; but ⟨p. 88⟩there she stood as a pillar of salt, a durable pillar and monument of wrath, for her folly and wickedness.
SO it very often is with backsliders, though they may live a considerable time after. When they look back, after they have been taking pains for their salvation, they lose all, they put themselves under vast disadvantages; by quenching the spirit of GOD, and losing their convictions, they dreadfully harden their own hearts and stupefy their souls, make way for discouragements, dreadfully strengthen and establish the interest of sin in their hearts, many ways give satan great advantages to ruin them, and provoke GOD oftentimes utterly to leave them to hardness of heart. When they come to look back, their souls presently become dead and hard like Lot's wife's body: and if this be the case, though they live long after, they never get any further; it is worse for them, than if they were immediately damned. When persons in fleeing out of Sodom look back, their last case is far worse than the first; Mat. xii. 43, 44, 45.—And experience confirms that none ordinarily are so hard to be brought to repentance as backsliders.
SO it very often is with backsliders, though they may live a considerable time after. When they look back, after they have been taking pains for their salvation, they lose all, they put themselves under vast disadvantages; by quenching the spirit of GOD, and losing their convictions, they dreadfully harden their own hearts and stupify their souls, make way for discouragements, dreadfully strengthen and establish the interest of sin in their hearts, many ways give satan great advantages to ruin them, and provoke GOD oftentimes utterly to leave them to hardness of heart. When they come to look back, their souls presently become dead and hard like Lot's wife's body: and if this be the case, though they live long after, they never get any further; it is worse for them, than if they were immediately damned. When persons in fleeing out of Sodom look back, their last case is far worse than the first;