Beginning to 1820: Short Answer Quiz

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”


  1. At one point in his sermon, Edwards provides an extended monologue of a hypothetical sinner caught unawares by God’s thunderous wrath: “‘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. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vague dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, peace and safety, then suddenly death and destruction rained down upon me’” (429 [full ed.] 197-98 [shorter ed.]). What is the effect of ventriloquizing such a person, for so much time in his sermon? What does Edwards mean to do by giving this monologue of wickedness a human face?

  1. “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 it or endure it” (431 [full ed.] 199 [shorter ed.]). None of the content of this passage is new; Edwards has been hammering home his theme of God’s wrath from the beginning of the sermon, and will continue until its end. Give a reading of the language of this passage, with attention to poetic devices of sound and rhetorical devices of direct address and repetition: why should this passage be moving and effective?

  1. “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” (431 [full ed.] 200 [shorter ed.]). This passage marks the second appearance of the phrase “peace and safety” (see question 1 for the other passage), which seems to be a marker for Edwards of religious hypocrisy. What does this particular phrase signify in the congregation, and how can it mask a “natural man” who has not actually embraced Christ so that it seems as though he has?

  1. “God seems now to be hastily gathering in His elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great outpouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded” (436 [full ed.] 204-05 [shorter ed.]). Given what you know of the Great Awakening, interpret the “haste” and “little time” that gives rise to the zealous tone of this sermon. Why does Edwards suppose the end times are near? What evidence does he provide that time is short?



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