You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it; but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it.
...
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.
Edwards, Jonathan. "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God!". July 8, 1741. March 2008 <http://www.piney.com/JonEdwSinHands.html>.
By the Student,
This passionate speech by Edwards is mainly appealing to the emotion of fear in the Puritans, who already picture an angry god. One who is ready to shoot them in the hearts with arrows is just asking for the attention of the paranoid religious folk. They have apparently been resting on a cloud of false security and Edwards wants to vaporize it to keep everyone in line. What exactly these people did to make him so inclined towards believing that God is going to destroy them all, I do not know, but it must have been bad.
Upon further research, these types of speeches were very common and were meant to scare audiences into living good lives. Probably one of the more effective methods, but I'd start to resent God after a while if it was me.
By a Doubtful Puritan,
My heavens! Minister Edwards gave such an impassioned sermon today! I do not remember sermons being so frightful. My wife and children usually go without me, much to the disapproval of both her and the townsfolk. Today I decided to go, however, since I got a 'friendly reminder' nailed to my door by the local church and what do I get when we are seated in the pews? A man scaring us into being pious.
He claims that we have been angering God with our heathen activities (like not going to church) and that we will get struck down. I am in the vast minority here, but I lead a rather un-pious life and his pleas do not strike fear into my heart as it has with my wife, the poor thing. She appears to have snapped and is constantly looking at the ground to make sure it hasn't dissapeared as Minister Edwards has said that it would if we weren't careful.
Sorry Edwards. I'm not convinced. I'm waiting for the lightning bolt.
Essential Question (for poems and passage),
The Puritan era was full of both fear and love for a finicky God and the eternal heaven and personal longing as families were torn apart because of the manpower needed to create and control a new country. In the excerpt above, the fear of God is shown while in 'Huswifery', the great longing for an eternity spent with the angry God is shown. People were rabid about pushing their beliefs and religion on others 'in the name of the Lord', which just happened to be the thing that they had been trying to escape over in England. Longing for family, which was probably a sin anyway, is expressed by one of the first published female poets in the new world as she writes two poems about her love and longing for her husband and again, how she wants to spend eternity with him. This was the only reference to God in her poems and if they hadn't been added, the poems may not have been printed because it was expressing feeling for something other than God, something that the Puritans were not really into. Puritans were putting the new country through a period of fierce passion for an angry God and for love taken from them for an early Manifest Destiny.
...
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows.
Edwards, Jonathan. "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God!". July 8, 1741. March 2008 <http://www.piney.com/JonEdwSinHands.html>.
By the Student,
This passionate speech by Edwards is mainly appealing to the emotion of fear in the Puritans, who already picture an angry god. One who is ready to shoot them in the hearts with arrows is just asking for the attention of the paranoid religious folk. They have apparently been resting on a cloud of false security and Edwards wants to vaporize it to keep everyone in line. What exactly these people did to make him so inclined towards believing that God is going to destroy them all, I do not know, but it must have been bad.
Upon further research, these types of speeches were very common and were meant to scare audiences into living good lives. Probably one of the more effective methods, but I'd start to resent God after a while if it was me.
By a Doubtful Puritan,
My heavens! Minister Edwards gave such an impassioned sermon today! I do not remember sermons being so frightful. My wife and children usually go without me, much to the disapproval of both her and the townsfolk. Today I decided to go, however, since I got a 'friendly reminder' nailed to my door by the local church and what do I get when we are seated in the pews? A man scaring us into being pious.
He claims that we have been angering God with our heathen activities (like not going to church) and that we will get struck down. I am in the vast minority here, but I lead a rather un-pious life and his pleas do not strike fear into my heart as it has with my wife, the poor thing. She appears to have snapped and is constantly looking at the ground to make sure it hasn't dissapeared as Minister Edwards has said that it would if we weren't careful.
Sorry Edwards. I'm not convinced. I'm waiting for the lightning bolt.
Essential Question (for poems and passage),
The Puritan era was full of both fear and love for a finicky God and the eternal heaven and personal longing as families were torn apart because of the manpower needed to create and control a new country. In the excerpt above, the fear of God is shown while in 'Huswifery', the great longing for an eternity spent with the angry God is shown. People were rabid about pushing their beliefs and religion on others 'in the name of the Lord', which just happened to be the thing that they had been trying to escape over in England. Longing for family, which was probably a sin anyway, is expressed by one of the first published female poets in the new world as she writes two poems about her love and longing for her husband and again, how she wants to spend eternity with him. This was the only reference to God in her poems and if they hadn't been added, the poems may not have been printed because it was expressing feeling for something other than God, something that the Puritans were not really into. Puritans were putting the new country through a period of fierce passion for an angry God and for love taken from them for an early Manifest Destiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment