' sermon
was delivered to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut during a time when it was widely
believed that many Congregationalists had become comfortable in their own salvation, and thus
insufficiently zealous. Edwards, like many other ministers often identified with the Great
Awakening, hoped to win back, or more accurately reinvigorate these lapsed church members. The
sermon itself was a comment on Deuteronomy 32:35, which read "Their feet shall slide in due
time," and Edwards' strategy was to portray man, inherently evil, as being constantly in
danger of immediate destruction:
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.
The only thing, Edwards averred, that caused God to forbear was his
mercy, and he emphasized that unless the members of the congregation turned to Christ, they
could be cut loose, like a spider hanging from a string, to descend into the pit of Hell. There
was, ultimately, hope, but first people had to understand how immediate the danger
was.
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