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Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758)

was a Christian preacher and theologian. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian," and one of America's greatest intellectuals. Edwards's theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Edwards delivered the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", a classic of early American literature, during another revival in 1741, following George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies. Edwards is well known for his many books, The End For Which God Created the World, The Life of David Brainerd, which served to inspire thousands of missionaries throughout the 19th century, and Religious Affections, which many Reformed Evangelicals still read today.


Jonathan Edwards was a colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian."

His work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. His famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is credited for starting the First Great Awakening. Edwards is widely known for his books Religious Affections and The Freedom of the Will. He died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at the College of New Jersey (later to be named Princeton University). Edwards is widely regarded as America's greatest theologian.

      Jonathan Edwards was the only boy among eleven children. In 1720 he graduated from Yale as the valedictorian of his class. He continued at Yale working on a graduate degree in theology and was saved at the age of seventeen. Edwards was ordained in 1727 and joined his grandfather as an assistant pastor. In 1729 he became pastor of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, which had some six hundred members. In 1735 God's blessing on his preaching resulted in a great revival with more than three hundred people saved and added to the church. Edwards is considered to be one of the men most responsible for the Great Awakening. His famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," was first preached in 1741 at Enfield, Massachusetts. In 1750 Edwards was voted out by his church after his attempt to limit church membership to those who made a profession of faith in Christ.

      He spent the next seven years as a missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1758 he accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey (now called Princeton). After just weeks on the job, he died from smallpox brought on by an inoculation to protect him from the disease. Jonathan Edwards and his wife had eleven children. He spent one hour each night in conversation and instruction with his family. His daughter Jerusha was engaged to David Brainerd when he died of tuberculosis. Edwards' two most famous literary works are The Life and Diary of David Brainerd (1749) and Freedom of the Will (1754). Edwards is buried in Princeton, New Jersey.

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But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before to-morrow morning. Those of you that finally continue in a natural condition, that shall keep out of hell longest, will be there in a little time!
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But it will not be so at their last meeting at the day of judgment; sinners, when they shall meet their minister before their great Judge, will not meet him with a stupid conscience: they will then be fully convinced of the truth of those things which they formerly heard from him, concerning the greatness and terrible majesty of God, his holiness, and hatred of sin, and his awful justice in punishing it, the strictness of his law, and the dreadfulness and truth of his threatenings, and their own unspeakable guilt and misery:
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This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience.
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But here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor, damned, hopeless souls give for one day’s such opportunity as you now enjoy!
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Natural men’s prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, don’t secure ’em a moment. This, divine providence and universal experience does also bear testimony to.
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All wicked men’s pains and contrivance they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, don’t secure ’em from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security, he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes won’t fail.
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And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him and pressing into the Kingdom of God.
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we, doubtless, should hear one and another reply, “No, I never intended to come here: I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself: I thought my scheme good: I intended to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief: death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. O my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me.” 10.
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And nothing is more common than for men to be mistaken concerning their own state: many that are abominable to God, and the children of his wrath, think highly of themselves, as his precious saints and dear children. Yea, there is reason to think that often some that are most bold in their confidence of their safe and happy state, and think themselves not only true saints, but the most eminent saints in the congregation, are in a peculiar manner a smoke in God’s nose.
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We are dependent on Christ the Son of God, as he is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. We are dependent on the Father, who has given us Christ, and made him to be these things to us. We are dependent on the Holy Ghost, for ’tis of him that we are in Christ Jesus; ’tis the Spirit of God that gives faith in him, whereby we receive him and close with him.
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God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise, to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen.
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tis plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.
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the gift was infinitely precious, because it was a person infinitely worthy, a person of infinite glory; and also because it was a person infinitely near and dear to God. The grace is great in proportion to the benefit we have given us in him: the benefit is doubly infinite, in that in him we have deliverance from an infinite, because an eternal, misery; and do also receive eternal joy and glory.
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they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold ’em up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them.
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1 Cor. iv. 5, “Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.” Then none shall be deceived concerning his own state, nor shall be any more in doubt about it. There shall be an eternal end to all the ill conceit and vain hopes of deluded hypocrites, and all the doubts and fears of sincere Christians.
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Ministers, who now often meet their people to preach to ’em the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, to convince ’em that there is a God, and declare to ’em what manner of being he is, and to convince ’em that he governs and will judge the world, and that there is a future state of rewards and punishments, and to preach to ’em a Christ in heaven and at the right hand of God in an unseen world, shall then meet their people in the most immediate sensible presence of this great God, Saviour and Judge, appearing in the most plain, visible and open manner, with great glory, with all his holy angels, before them and the whole world.
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Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.
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Ministers are sent forth by Christ to their people on his business, are his servants and messengers; and, when they have finished their service, they must return to their master to give him an account of what they have done, and of the entertainment they have had in performing their ministry. Thus we find, in Luke xiv. 16-21, that when the servant who was sent forth to call the guests to the great supper had done his errand, and finished his appointed service, he returned to his master, and gave him an account of what he had done, and of the entertainment he had received. And when the master, being angry, sent his servant to others, he returns again, and gives his master an account of his conduct and success.
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So we read, in Heb. xiii. 17, of ministers being rulers in the house of God, “that watch for souls, as those that must give account.” And we see by the forementioned Luke xiv., that ministers must give an account to their master, not only of their own behavior in the discharge of their office, but also of their people’s reception of them, and of the treatment they have met with among them. And
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If God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. The
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