N13259:514
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.
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.
No more could justly be understood to be certainly threatened, than that Nineveh should be destroyed in forty days continuing as it was. For it was for their wickedness that that destruction was threatened, and so the Ninevites took it. Therefore when the cause was removed, the effect ceased.—It was contrary to GOD'S known manner, to threaten punishment and destruction for sin here in this world absolutely, so that it should come upon the persons threatened unavoidably, let them repent and reform and do what they would; agreeably to Jer. xviii. 7, 8. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.—So that all threatenings of this nature had a condition implied in them, according to the known and declared manner of GOD'S dealing. And the Ninevites did not take it as an absolute sentence or denunciation: if they […], they would have despaired of any […] by fasting and reformation.
No more could justly be understood to be certainly threatened, than that Nineveh should be destroyed in forty days continuing as it was. For it was for their wickedness that that destruction was threatened, and so the Ninevites took it. Therefore when the cause was removed, the effect ceased.—It was contrary to GOD'S known manner, to threaten punishment and destruction for sin here in this world absolutely, so that it should come upon the persons threatened unavoidably, let them repent and reform and do what they would; agreeably to