N13259:513
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.
IF we respect temporal death, that was also fulfilled: he brought death upon himself and all his posterity, and he virtually suffered that death on that very day on which he ate. His body was brought into a corruptible, mortal and dying condition, and so it continued till it was dissolved.—If we look at eternal death, and indeed all that death, which was comprehended in the threatening, it was properly speaking fulfilled in CHRIST. When GOD said to Adam, If thou ea•est, thou shalt die, he spake not only to him, and of him personally; but the words respected mankind, Adam and his race, and doubtless were so understood by him. His offspring were to be looked upon as sinning in him, and so should die with him. The words do as justly allow of an modlation of death, as of sin; they are as well consistent with dying in a surety, as with sinning in one. Therefore the threatening is fulfilled in the death of CHRIST, the surety.
2. ANOTHER objection may arise from GOD'S threatening to Nineveh. He threatened that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed, which yet he did not fulfil.—I answer, that threatening could ⟨p. 191⟩justly be looked upon no otherwise, than as conditional. It was of the nature of a warning, and not of an absolute denunciation. Why was Jonah sent to the Ninevites, but to give them warning, that they might have opportunity to repent, reform, and avert the approaching destruction? GOD had no other design or end in sending the prophet to them, but that they might be warned and tried by him, as GOD warned the Israelites, and warned Judah and Jerusalem before their destruction. Therefore the prophets, together with their prophecies of approaching destruction, joined earnest exhortations to repent and reform, that it might be averted.