JONATHAN EDWARDS
                               (1703-1758)

   Jonathan Edwards is considered by many to be the first of the great
American-born preachers. He was born the son of a minister in 1703 in East
Windsor, Connecticut, and started on the road to distinction early. With
ten older sisters to help teach him, Jonathan was only twelve when he
attained a working knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He graduated
from Yale University when he was seventeen. At nineteen he began preaching
and was ordained as a Congregationalist minister five years later.
   In 1727 Edwards became a pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he
remained for twenty-two years. During this time his preaching was a
principal factor in the first Great Awakening. In 1750 he went to
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to serve as pastor and missionary to the
Indians.
   Edwards's voice and manner were not ideal for pulpit oratory. Poor
eyesight forced him to hold sermons close to his eyes as he read them word
for word. But his intellect and imagination enabled him to present truth
in a powerful way. He was endued with Holy Spirit power and emotional
fervor that distinguished him from the other Puritan leaders of his day.
Edwards profoundly influenced George Whitefield, Thomas Chalmers, and
David Brainerd (who was engaged to Edwards's daughter before his untimely
death). A notable philosopher and deep thinker, Edwards ranks as one of
the greatest preachers of colonial America.
   The following sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is his
most celebrated, and one of the most famous ever preached by anyone. It
was a powerful impetus to the great revival in New England. He preached
the sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741.
   Edwards accepted the presidency of Princeton College in 1758. He died
from a smallpox vaccination shortly thereafter.


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                 SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
                                  by
                           Jonathan Edwards




"Their foot shall slide in due time" (Deut. 32:35)

   There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of
hell, but the mere pleasure of God.
   By the mere pleasure of God, I mean His sovereign pleasure. His
arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of
difficulty any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had, in
the last degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the
preservation of wicked men one moment.
   The truth of this observation may appear by the following
considerations:
   1. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at
any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong, when God rises up. The
strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any deliver out of His
hands.
   He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but He can most
easily do it. There is no fortress that is any defense from the power
of God. Though hand join in hand, and a vast multitude of God's enemies
combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces.
They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind or large
quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to
tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth. It is easy
for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by. Thus
easy is it for God when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell.
What are we, that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke
the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?
   2. They deserve to be cast into hell. So that divine justice never
stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using His power
at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls
aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of
the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down; why
cumbereth it the ground?" (Luke 13:7). The sword of divine justice is
every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the
hand of arbitrary mercy and God's mere will that holds it back.
   3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They
do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of
the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that
God has fixed between Him and mankind, is gone out against them, and
stands against them, so that they are bound over already to hell. "He
that believeth not is condemned already" (John 3:18). Every unconverted
man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is. "Ye
are from beneath" (John 8:23); and thither he is bound; it is the place
that justice, and God's Word, and sentence of His unchangeable law
assign to him.
   4. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God
that is expressed in the torments of hell; and the reason why they do
not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power
they are, is not at present very angry with them -- as He is with many
miserable creatures now tormented in hell, who there feel and bear the
fierceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great
numbers that are now on earth, yea doubtless with some who may read
this book, and may be at ease, than He is with many of those who are
now in the flames of hell.
   So it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, and does
not resent it, that He does not let loose His hand and cut them off.
God is not altogether such a one as themselves, though they may imagine
Him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them; their damnation does
not slumber. The pit is prepared; the fire is made ready. The furnace
is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The
glittering sword is whetted and held over them, and the pit hath opened
its mouth under them.
   5. The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his
own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has
their souls in his possession and under his dominion. The devils watch
them; they are ever by them, at their right hand. They stand waiting
for them like greedy, hungry lions that see their prey and expect to
have it but are for the present kept back. If God should withdraw His
hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon
their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its
mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be
hastily swallowed up and lost.
   6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles
reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire, if
it were not for God's restraints. There is laid in the very nature of
carnal men, a foundation for the torments of hell. There are those
corrupt principles, in reigning power in them and in full possession of
them, that are seeds of hell fire. The principles are active and
powerful, exceedingly violent in their nature; and if it were not for
the restraining hand of God upon them, they would soon break out. They
would flame out after the same manner as the same corruption, the same
enmity, does in the hearts of damned souls and would beget the same
torments as they do in them. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it
is destructive in its very nature; and if God should leave it without
restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly
miserable. The corruption of the heart of the man is immoderate and
boundless in its fury. While wicked men live here, it is like fire pent
up by the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so,
if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a
fiery oven or furnace of fire and brimstone.
   7. It is no security to wicked men for one moment that there are no
visible means of death at hand! It is no security to a natural man that
he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now
immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no
visible danger, in any respect, in his circumstances. The manifold and
continual experience of the world, in all ages, shows this is no
evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity and that the
next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways
and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable
and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a
rotten covering, and there are innumberable places in this covering so
weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not
seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday; the sharpest sight
cannot discern them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of
taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell that there
is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the expense of
a miracle, or to go out of the ordinary course of His providence to
destroy any wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of
sinners going out of the world are so in God's hands, and so
universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination, that
it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God, whether
sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made
use of, or at all concerned in the case.
   8. Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or
the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them a moment. To
this, divine providence and universal experience do bear testimony.
There is this clear evidence that men's own wisdom is no security to
them from death: that, if it were otherwise, we should see some
difference between the wise and politic men of the world and others,
with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death. But how
is it in fact? "How dieth the wise man? as the fool" (Eccl. 2:16).
   9. All wicked men's pains and contrivances which they use to escape
hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men,
do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost every natural man who
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 as to how he shall avoid damnation and
flatters himself that he contrives well for himself and that his
schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved
and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to
hell; but each one imagines that he forms plans to effect his escape
better than others have done. He does not intend to go to that place of
torment; he says within himself that he intends to take effectual care
and to order matters for himself so as not to fail.
   But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their
own schemes and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they
trust to nothing but a shadow. The great part of those who heretofore
have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are
undoubtedly gone to hell, and it was not because they were not as wise
as those who are now alive. It was not because they did not lay out
matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If we could
come to speak with them and inquire of them, one by one, whether they
expected, when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be
subjects of that misery, we doubtless should hear one and another
reply, "No, I never intended to come here. I had arranged matters
otherwise in my mind. I thought I should contrive will for myself; I
thought my scheme good. I intended to take effectual care, but it came
upon me unexpectedly. 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. 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. But surely they have no interest in the promise of the
covenant of grace who are not the children of the covenant, who do not
believe in any of the promises and have no interest in the Mediator of
the covenant.
   So that, whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises
made to natural men's earnest seeking and knocking, it is plain and
manifest that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever
prayer he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of
obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.
   So it is that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit
of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit and are already sentenced to
it, and God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is as great toward them
as toward those that are actually suffering the execution of the
fierceness of His wrath in hell; and 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 them up for 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. In short they have no refuge, nothing to take
hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary
will and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.

Application

   The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted
persons to a conviction of their danger. This that you have heard is
the case of every one out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of
burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful
pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God. There is hell's wide
gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to
take hold of. There is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is
only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
   Your wickedness makes you, as it were, heavy as lead, to rend
downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell. If God should
let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge
into the bottomless gulf. Your healthy constitution, 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. Were it not for the
sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment, for
you are a burden to it. The creation groans with you. The creature is
made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly. The sun
does not willingly shine upon you, to give you light to serve sin and
Satan. The earth does not willingly yield her increase, to satisfy your
lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted
upon. The air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the
flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service
of God's enemies.
   The wrath of God is like great waters that are restrained for the
present. They increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till
an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped the more rapid
and mighty is its course when once it is let loose. It is true that
judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the
floods of God's vengeance have been withheld. But your guilt in the
meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up
more wrath. The waters are constantly rising and waxing more and more
mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds
the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped and press hard to go
forward. 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. 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 bow of God's wrath is bent and the arrow made ready on the
string. Justice directs the bow to your heart and strains at the bow.
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 many 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.
   The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as
one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you
and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like a fire; He
looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire.
He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight. You are ten
thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful
venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended Him infinitely more than
ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet, it is nothing but His
hand that holds you from falling into fire every moment. It is ascribed
to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you
were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes
to sleep; and there is no other reason to be given, why you have not
dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that Gods' hand
has held you up. There is no other reason to be given, while you have
been reading this address, but His mercy; yea, no other reason can be
given why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
   O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great
furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath,
that you are held over in the hand of a God whose wrath is provoked and
incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You
hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing
about it and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder; and
you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save
yourself, nothing to keep off the flame of wrath, nothing of your own,
nothing that you have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to
spare you one moment.

And Consider Here More Particularly:

   1. Whose wrath it is. It is the wrath of the infinite God. If it
were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent prince,
it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is
very much dreaded, especially of absolute monarches, who have the
possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power -- to be
disposed of at their mere will. "The fear of a king is as the roaring
of a lion; whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul"
(Prov. 20:2). The subject who very much enrages an arbitrary prince is
liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent or
human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly potentates, in their
greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their greatest
terrors, are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust in comparison
with the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. It is
but little that they can do, when most enraged, and when they have
exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth, before
God, are as grasshoppers; they are nothing and less than nothing. Both
their love and their hatred are to be despised. The wrath of the great
King of kings is as much more terrible than theirs as His majesty is
greater. "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that
kill the body, and after than have no more that they can do. But I will
forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed
hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him" (Luke
12:4,5)
   2. It is the fierceness of His wrath that you are exposed to. We
often read of the fury of God, as in Isaiah 59:18: "According to their
deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries." So Isaiah
66:15: "For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his
chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his
rebuke with flames of fire." And so also in many other places. Thus we
read of "the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God"
(Rev. 19:15). The words are exceedingly terrible.
   Consider this, you that remain in an unregenerate state. That God
will execute the fierceness of His anger implies that He will inflict
wrath without any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of
your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to
your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down,
as it were, into an infinite gloom, He will have no compassion upon
you. He will not forbear the execution of His wrath, or in the least
lighten His hand. There shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God
then at all stay His rough wind. He will have no regard to your
welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any
other sense than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict
justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for
you to bear. "Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not
spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with
a loud voice, yet will I not hear them" (Ezek. 8:18). Now, God stands
ready to pity you; this is the day of mercy; you may cry now with some
encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is
passed, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in
vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard
to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to but to suffer
misery; you may continued in being to no other end -- for you will be a
vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use
of this vessel but only to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far
from pitying you when you cry to Him that it is said He will only "laugh
and mock." "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my
hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and
would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock
when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your
destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon
you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall
seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge,
and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel:
they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of
their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away
of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy
them" (Prov. 1:24-32).
   If you cry to God to pity you, He will be so far from pitying you in
your doleful case, or showing you the least reward or favor, that instead
of that He will only tread you under foot. And though He will know that
you cannot bear the weight of Omnipotence treading upon you, yet He will
not regard that, but He will crush you under His feet without mercy. He
will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on
His garments, so as to stain all His raiment. He will not only hate you,
but He will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit
for you but under His feet, to be trodden down as the mire of the streets.
   3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict, to the
end that He might show what the wrath of Jehovah is. God hath had it on
His heart to show to angels and men, both how excellent His love is and
also how terrible His wrath is. Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to
show how terrible their wrath is by the extreme punishments they would
execute on those that provoked them. But the great God is also willing to
show His wrath and magnify His awful majesty and mighty power in the
extreme sufferings of His enemies. "What if God, willing to show his
wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the
vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?" (Rom. 9:22). And seeing this is
His design, and what He has determined, even to show how terrible the
unmixed, unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, He
will do it to effect. There will be something accomplished and brought to
pass that will be dreadful with a witness. When the great and angry God
hath risen up and executed His awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the
wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight and power of His
indignation, then will God call upon the whole universe to behold the
awful majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it.
   Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you
continue in it; the infinite might, and majesty, and terribleness of the
omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you in the ineffable strength of
your torments. You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels,
and in the presence of the Lamb. When you shall be in this state of
suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on
the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of
the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore
that great power and majesty.
   4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this
fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment, but you must suffer it to
all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery.
When you look forward you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration
before you, which will swallow up your thoughts and amaze your souls; and
you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverances, and end, any
mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear
out long ages, millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this
almighty merciless vengeance. Then when you have so done, when many ages
have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is
but a point to what remains, that your punishment will indeed be infinite.
O, what can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is?
All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint
representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable, for "Who
knoweth the power of God's anger?"
   How dreadful is the state of those who are daily and hourly in danger
of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of
every soul that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober
and religious they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it,
whether you be young or old! There is reason to fear that there are many
who will read this book, or who have heard the gospel, who will actually
be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they
are or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and
hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering
themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they
shall escape. If we knew that there was one person, and but one, of those
that we know, that was to be subject of this misery, what an awful thing
would it be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would
it be to see such a person! How might every Christian lift up a lamentable
and bitter cry over him! But alas! Instead of one, how many is it likely
will remember these solemn reflections in hell!
   And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has
thrown the door of mercy wide open and stands 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. Many are daily coming from the east,
west, north, and south: many that were very lately in the same miserable
condition that you are in, are now in a happy state with their hearts
filled with love to Him who has loved them, and washed them from their
sins in His own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How
awful is it to be left behind at such a day, to see so many others
feasting while you are pining and perishing, to see so many rejoicing and
singing for joy of heart while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of
heart, and to howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in
such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of those who
are flocking from day to day to Christ?
   And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit
of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle-aged, or young
people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God's Word
and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of great mercy to
some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. Men's
hearts harden, and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if
they neglect their souls. Never was there a period when so many means were
employed for the salvation of souls, and if you entirely neglect them, you
will eternally curse the day of your birth. Now, undoubtedly, it is as it
was in the days of John the Baptist; the axe is laid at the root of the
trees, and every tree which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down
and cast into the fire. Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ,
now awake and flee from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is
now undoubtedly hanging over every unregenerate sinner. Let every one flee
out of Sodom: "Escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the
mountain, lest you be consumed."

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