According
toin , the only thing that keeps people out of hell is Gods mercy. We can see this in many
places in the sermon. Here are two examples:
€¦'tis to be
ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was 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 God's hand
has held you up.
And
There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere
pleasure of God.
In other words, everyone would be in
hell if God did not have mercy on them and hold them out of the fire.
When
Edwards preached this sermon, he was trying to instill greater religious fervor in his
audience. At that time, the Puritans of New England had, in general, been becoming less
religious. People were being admitted into the church without having had a genuine conversion
experience (this was called the Halfway Covenant). The church had to do this because too few
people had enough religious zeal to undergo such an experience. What this meant is that the
members of the church did not feel as attached to their religion as their forebears
had.
In order to remedy this, Edwards emphasized the fact that all humans
deserved to go to hell. He argued that there was nothing a person could do to deserve
salvation. The only thing people could do was to be converted to a deep and emotional love of
God. They had to be grateful to God for not allowing them to be cast into hell as they
deserved. They had to have
their hearts filled with love
to him that has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood.
This was why Edwards emphasized that only Gods mercy kept sinners
(which includes all living people) out of hell.
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