In Jonathan Edwards’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he argues that God is very angry at the natural unconverted men and in order to appease him, he had to scare his congregation to be religiously faithful and get the Puritans to own up to their salvation. He supports this claim by using an emotional appeal to fear and metaphor to intimidate and scare the audience. Edwards advances to his argument, as he states,“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” (Paragraph 5).
This emotional appeal to fear showed readers that although the pit was ready, there was a potential reason for one to die in flames because he gives them an opportunity to accept God’s sacrifice and start a new life of Christ. He tries to awaken people to the seriousness of their problems because of sin. Jonathan’s second advance to the argument would include a metaphor, “the bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on a string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart” (Paragraph 6).
This metaphor shows that God could unleash his wrath at any moment, but kindness saves them. Edwards purpose of converting natural men was to get them to be religious even if you try to look religious, you would have to have a change of heart to appease God. Jonathan adheres to a uprising issue because he says that praying does not do enough to bring religion to Puritans. He established a fearful tone for all unconverted men, who are the Puritan ministers because that is his job to serve them to make sure that gets faithful converters for God. The sermon is significant because they were treated unfairly by England monarchy and had no one else to go to other than God. The Puritans’ needed to listen to them in order to appease God properly.
Emily Chan