N13259:605
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. WITHOUT doubt, one proportion of time is better and fitter than another, for this purpose. One proportion is more suitable to the state of mankind, and will have a greater tendency to answer the ends of such times, than another. The times may be too far asunder: I think human reason is sufficient to discover, that it would be too seldom for the purposes of such solemn times, that they should be but once a year. So, I conclude, no body will deny, but that such times may be too near together to agree with the state and necessary affairs of mankind.
THEREFORE, there can be no difficulty in allowing, that some certain proportion of time, whether we can exactly discover it or not, is really fittest and best; and considering all things, considering the end for ⟨p. 230⟩which such times are kept, and the condition, circumstances and necessary affairs of men, and considering what the state of man is, taking one age and nation with another, that one proportion of time is more convenient and suitable, than any other: which GOD may know and exactly determine, though we, by reason of the scantiness of our understandings, cannot.
AS a certain frequency of the returns of these times may be more suitable, than any other, so one length or continuance of the times themselves may be fitter than another, to answer the purposes of such times. If such times, when they come, were to last but an hour, it would not well answer the end; for then worldly things would crowd too nearly upon sacred exercises, and there would not be that opportunity to get the mind so thoroughly free and disengaged from other things, as there would be, if the times were longer. But they being so short, sacred and profane things would be as it were mixed together.—Therefore, a certain distance between these times, and a certain continuance of them, when they come, is more proper than others; which GOD knows and is able to determine, though perhaps we cannot.