N13259:315
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
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.
IT is natural to one who is truly born from above to pray to GOD, and to pour out his soul in holy supplications before his heavenly father. This is as natural to the new nature and life as breathing is to the nature and life of the body. But hypocrites have not this new nature. Those illuminations and affections which they had, went away and left no change of nature. Therefore prayer naturally dies away in them, having no foundation for the keeping of it up, laid in the nature of the soul. It is maintained, while it is maintained, only by a certain force put upon nature But force is not constant; and as that declines, nature will take place again.
THE spirit of a true convert is a spirit of true love to GOD, and that naturally inclines the soul to those duties wherein it is conversant with GOD, and makes it to delight in approaching to GOD. But an hypocrite hath no such spirit. He is left under the reigning power of enmity against GOD, which naturally inclines him to shun the presence of GOD.
THE spirit of a true convert is a spirit of faith and reliance on the power, wisdom and mercy of GOD, and such a spirit is naturally expressed in prayer. True prayer is nothing else but faith expressed. Hence ⟨p. 119⟩we read of the prayer of faith; James v. 15. True Christian prayer is the faith and reliance of the soul breathed forth in words. But an hypocrite is without the spirit of faith. He hath no true reliance or dependence on God, but is really self-dependent.