N13259:533
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.
You may by considering make yourselves more sensible, than you ordinarily are; but it is a little you can conceive of what it is to have no hope in such torments.
How sinking would it be to you to endure such pain, as you have felt in this world, without any hopes, and to know that you never should be delivered from it, nor have one minute's rest! You can now scarcely conceive how doleful that would be. How much more, to endure the •ast weight of the wrath of GOD, without hope▪ The more the damned in hell think of the eternity of their torments, the more amazing will it appear to them; and alas! they are not able to avoid thinking of it; they will not be able to keep it out of their minds. Their tortures will not divert them from it, but will fix their attention to it.—O how dreadful will eternity appear to them, after they shall have been thinking on it for ages together, and shall have had so long an experience of their torments!—The damned in hell will have two infinites perpetually to amaze them, and swallow them up: One is an infinite GOD, whose wrath they will bear, and whom they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable enemy:—The other is the infinite duration of their torment.
IF it were possible for the damned in hell to have a ⟨p. 199⟩comprehensive knowledge of eternity, their sorrow and grief would be infinite in degree. The comprehensive view of so much sorrow, which they must endure, would cause infinite grief for the present. Though they will not have a comprehensive knowledge of it, yet they will doubtless have a vastly more lively and strong apprehension of it, than we can have in this world. Their torments will give them an impression of it.—A man in his present state, without any enlargement of his capacity, would have a vastly more lively impression of eternity than he has, if he were only under some pretty sharp pain, in some member of his body, and were at the same time assured, that he must endure that pain forever. His pain would give him a greater sense of eternity, than other men have. How much more will those excruciating torments, which the damned will suffer, have this effect!