N13259:236
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.
WE in this land of light, have long enjoyed greater advantages, than the most of the world. But the advantages which persons are under now for their, salvation, are perhaps tenfold to what they have been at such times as we have ordinarily lived in; and backsliding will be proportionably the greater sin, and the more dangerous to the soul.—You have seen GOD'S glory and his wonders amongst us, in a most marvellous manner of late. If therefore you look back after this, there will be great danger that GOD will swear in his wrath, that you shall never enter into his rest▪ ⟨p. 90⟩as GOD sware concerning them that were for going back into Egypt, after they had seen the wonders which GOD wrought for Israel. Num. xiv. 22, 23, Because all th•se men that have seen my glory and my miracles that I did in Egypt, and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers neither shall any of them that provoked me, see it.—The wonders that we have seen among us of late, have been of a more glorious nature, than those that the children of Israel saw in Egypt and in the wilderness.
7. WE know not but that great part of the wicked world, are at this day, in Sodom's circumstances, when Lot fled out of it; having some outward, temporal destruction hanging over it. It looks as if some great thing were coming; the state of things in the world seems to be ripe for some great revolution. The world has got to such a terrible degree of wickedness, that it is probable that the cry of it has by this time reached up to heaven; and it is hardly probable that GOD will suffer things to go on, as they now do, much longer. It is likely that GOD will ere long appear in awful majesty to vindicate his own cause; and then none will be safe that are out of CHRIST. Now therefore every one should flee for his life, and escape to the mountain, left he be consumed.—We cannot certainly tell what GOD is about to do, but this we may know, that those who are out of CHRIST, are in a most unsafe state.