In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," to what does Edwards compare humans?

is a
famous revivalist sermon by Puritan minister Johnathan Edwards. Edwards was a crucial part of
the First Great Awakening, a movement in the United States aimed at bringing people back to God
by bringing fiery, rhetorically-charged sermons to meeting houses and revival gatherings.
Edwards, being a puritan, was a staunch Calvinist, and his belief in the five principle tenants
of Calvinist doctrine comes across clearly in his sermonespecially the ideas of total depravity
and limited atonement.

In his sermon, Johnathan Edwards says many things
about the audience and their faith. He compares the listeners to three principle symbols: a
tree, troubled seas, and a spider or insect. Each of these symbols acts in a different capacity
for explaining one of the doctrinal stances that Edwards promulgated throughout the
sermon.

Of the first symbol, he says,

They deserve to be cast into Hell; so that divine Justice never stands in the Way, it makes
no...