N13259:36
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 not only necessary that men should seem to be very much engaged, and appear as if they were devoted to their duty for a little while; but there must be a constant devotedness; they must be devoted to this work in a persevering way, as Noah was to the business of building the ark, going on with that great, difficult, and expensive affair, and holding out through the one hundred and twenty years, till it was finished, and till the flood came.—Men must not only be diligent in the use of the means of grace, and be anxiously engaged to escape eternal ruin, till they obtain hope and comfort; but afterwards they must persevere in the duties of religion, till the flood come, the flood of death.—Not only must the faculties, strength, and possessions of men ⟨p. 15⟩be devoted to this work; but also their time and their lives: They must give up their whole lives to it, even to the very day when GOD causes it to rain on the earth, and the storms and floods come. This is the work or business, which men have to do, in order to their salvation.
ENQ. 2. Why is it needful that men should undertake to go through such a work in order to their salvation?
ANS. I. Negatively; not to merit salvation, or to recommend them to the saving mercy of GOD. Men are not saved on the account of any work of theirs, and yet they are not saved without works. If we merely consider what it is for which, or on the account of which men are saved, no work at all in men is necessary to their salvation. In this respect they are saved wholly without any work of theirs. Tit. iii. 5. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.