N13259:252
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 6: The Warnings of Scripture are in the best manner adapted to the awakening and conversio…
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.
BUT GOD who knows our nature and circumstances, knows what is most adapted to them. He who made the faculties of our souls, knows what will have the greatest tendency to move them and to work upon them. He who is striving with us, to bring us to repentance and salvation, uses the fittest and best means. In contriving and appointing the means of our salvation, he chooses better for us than we should for ourselves.
IF a person should rise from the dead to warn sinners, coming from heaven, where they see the misery of the damned, or from hell, where they feel it; and should tell sinners how dismal those torments are, should set them out as well as he would be under advantages to do, having seen or felt them, and should confirm what he said by telling that he had seen the smoke of their torments, had seen the raging of the flames, had seen the dreadful crew of devils and damned souls together, and had heard their dismal cries and shrieks; or should say that he had felt them, and should express by words and actions the doleful state of the damned and the extremity of their torments; such a thing as this would probably greatly fright and terrify many sinners, who were not terrified by reading the bible, nor by hearing preaching about hell torments. But it would be very much because of the unusualness and strangeness of the thing. Men are apt to be much affected with strange things, and ⟨p. 97⟩to be much affrighted by spectres in the dark, because they are unusual. But if they were as common as preaching is, they would lose their effect.
IF a person should rise from the dead to warn sinners, coming from heaven, where they see the misery of the damned, or from hell, where they feel it; and should tell sinners how dismal those torments are, should set them out as well as he would be under advantages to do, having seen or felt them, and should confirm what he said by telling that he had seen the smoke of their torments, had seen the raging of the flames, had seen the dreadful crew of devils and damned souls together, and had heard their dismal cries and shreiks; or should say that he had felt them, and should express by words and actions the doleful state of the damned and the extremity of their torments; such a thing as this would probably greatly fright and terrify many sinners, who were not terrified by reading the bible, nor by hearing preaching about hell torments. But it would be very much because of the unusualness and strangeness of the thing. Men are apt to be much affected with strange things, and