N13259:237
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.
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.
8. TO enforce this warning against looking back, let me beseech you to consider the exceeding proneness which there is in the heart to it. The heart of man is a backsliding heart. There is in the heart a ⟨p. 91⟩great love and hankering desire after the ease, pleasure and enjoyments of Sodom, as there was in Lot's wife, by which persons are continually liable to temptations to look back. The heart is so much towards Sodom, that it is a difficult thing to keep the eye from turning that way, and the feet from tending thither. When men under convictions are put upon fleeing, it is a mere force, it is because GOD lays hold on their hands, as he did on Lot's and his wife's, and drags them so far. But the tendency of the heart is to go back to Sodom again.
PERSONS are very prone to back-sliding, also through' discouragement. They are apt to be discouraged. The heart is unsteady, soon tired, soon gives out, is apt to listen to discouraging temptations. A little difficulty and delay soon overcome it's feeble resolutions. And discouragement tends to backsliding: it weakens persons hands, lies as a dead weight on their hearts, and makes them drag heavily; and if it continue long, it very often issues in security and senselessness. Convictions are often shaken off that way: they begin first to go off with discouragement.