N37435:178
The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. Illustrated in a sermon
The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. Illustrated in a sermon. : To which is added a farewell sermon; by Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Delivered at Northampton, June 22d, 1750. After the people's public rejection of him as their minister, and renouncing their relation to him as pastor of the church.
Northampton: printed by Daniel Wright & Co for Simeon Butler, 1797
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Ministers and their people, while their relation continues, often meet together in this world: They are wont to meet from Sabbath to Sabbath, and at other times, for the public worship of God, and administration, of ordinances, and the solemn services of God's house: And besides these meetings, they have also occasions to meet for the determining and managing their ecclesiastical affairs, for the exercise of church-discipline, and the settling and adjusting those things which concern the purity and good order of public administrations. But their meeting at the day of judgment will be exceeding diverse, in its manner and circumstances, from any such meetings and interviews as they have one with another in the present state. I would observe how, in a few particulars.
(1.) Now they meet together in a preparatory mutable state, but then in an unchangeable state.
(1.) Now they meet together in a preparatory mutable state, but then in an unchangable state.
Now sinners in the congregation meet their minister in a state wherein they are capable of a saving change, capable of being turned, through God's blessing on the ministrations and labours of their pastor, ⟨p. 98⟩from the power of Satan unto God; and being brought out of a state of guilt, condemnation and wrath, to a state of peace and favour with God, to the enjoyment of the privileges of his children, and a title to their eternal inheritance. And saints now meet their minister with great remains of corruption, and sometimes under great spiritual difficulties and affliction: And therefore are yet the proper subjects of means of an happy alteration of their state, consisting in a greater freedom from these things, which they have reason to hope for in the way of an attendance on ordinances, and of which God is pleased commonly to make his ministers the instruments. And ministers and their people now meet in order to the bringing to pass such happy changes; they are the great benefits sought in their solemn meetings in this world.