N13259:431
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 10: The future Punishment of the Wicked unavoidable and intolerable.
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.
THE nature of man desires happiness; it is the nature of the soul to crave and thirst after well being: and if it be under misery, it eagerly pants after relief; and the greater the misery is, the more eagerly doth it struggle for help. But if all relief be withhold••• all strength overborne, all support utterly gone; then it sinks into the darkness of death.
THE nature of man desires happiness; it is the nature of the soul to crave and thirst after well being: and if it be under misery, it eagerly pants after relief; and the greater the misery is, the more eagerly doth it struggle for help. But if all relief be withhold••• all strength overborn, all support utterly gone; then it sinks into the darkness of death.
WE can conceive but little of the matter; we cannot conceive what that sinking of the soul, in such a case, is. But to help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst of a glowing brick-kiln, or of a great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally •••ching […] coal of fire, as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an ••ur, full of fire, as full within and without, as a bright […] of fire, all the while full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a ⟨p. 160⟩furnace! and how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you! If it were to be measured by a glass, how long would the glass seem to be a running! And after you had endured it for one minute, how over-bearing would it be to you, to think that you had it to endure the other fourteen!
WE can conceive but little of the matter; we cannot conceive what that sinking of the soul, in such a case, is. But to help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, all of a glowing heat, or into the midst of a glowing brick-kiln, or of a great furnace, where your pain would be as much greater than that occasioned by accidentally ching coal of fire, as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an ur, full of fire, as full within and without, as a bright of fire, all the while full of quick sense; what orror would you feel at the entrance of such a