N13259:489
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 strange how men will go directly against so plain and full revelations of scripture, as to suppose, notwithstanding all these things, that the eternal punishment threatened against the wicked, signifies no more, than annihilation.
III. As the future punishment of the wicked consists in sensible misery; so it shall not only continue for a very long time, but shall be absolutely without end.
OF those who have held that the torments of hell are not absolutely eternal, there have been two sorts. (1.) Some suppose that in the threatenings of everlasting punishment, the terms used, do not necessarily import a proper eternity, but only a very long duration. (2.) Others suppose that if they do import a proper eternity; yet we cannot necessarily conclude thence, that GOD will fulfil his threatenings.
Therefore I shall,
FIRST, show that the threatenings of eternal punishment do very plainly and fully import a proper, absolute eternity, and not merely a long duration.