N37435:72
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.
Your ingratitude has been the greater, that you have not only abused the attribute of God's mercy, taking encouragement from it to continue in sin, but you have thus abused this mercy, under that very notion of its being exercised towards you, in a supposition that God would exercise infinite mercy to you in particular; which consideration should have especially endeared God to you. You have taken encouragement ⟨p. 45⟩to sin the more, from that consideration, that Christ came into the world and died to save sinners; that thanks has Christ had from you, for enduring such a tormenting death for his enemies! Now, how justly might it be so, that God should refuse that you should ever be the better for his Son's laying down his life! It was because of these things that you put off seeking salvation: You would take the pleasures of sin still longer, hardening yourself with that, that mercy was infinite, and it would not be too late, if you sought it afterwards; now, how justly may God disappoint you in this, and order it so that it shall be too late!
7. How have some of you risen up against God, and in the frame of your minds opposed him in his sovereign dispensations! And how justly upon that account might God oppose you, and set himself against you! You never yet would submit to God; never could willingly comply with it, that God should have dominion over the world, and that he should govern it for his own glory, according to his own wisdom. You, a poor worm, a potsherd, a broken piece of an earthen vessel, have dared to find fault and quarrel with God. Isaiah, .xlv.9. "Woe to him that strives with his maker. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth: Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?" ⟨p. 46⟩But yet you have ventured to do it. Rom. ix.20. Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?" But yet you have thought you was big enough; you have taken upon you to call God to an account, why he does thus and thus; you have said to Jehovah, What dost thou?