Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Edwards uses amplification throughout Sinners to elaborate his ideas and intensify their emotional effect. The passage cited above depicts the condition of the unrepentant sinner through an accumulation of details: Not only is the sinner condemned to hell, but Satan awaits him there, hell opens its mouth toward him, flames gather and flash around him, and the hellish fire within his own soul struggles to break free and merge with the flames of eternal damnation. Amplification is a key rhetorical and methodological strategy of Edwards’s argument. Each of the enumerated proofs and “considerations” in the three main parts of the sermon teases out a specific implication or ground of the doctrine that nothing keeps the wicked out of hell at any moment but the arbitrary will of God. The mounting effect of these incremental claims is meant to be irresistible. The second implication, for instance, declares that not only were the ancient Israelites always exposed to destruction, “they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction” (625). Through his controlled and meticulous use of qualifications and the amassing of evidence, Edwards cogently and inexorably demonstrates that the sinner must seek Christ immediately or risk sudden and eternal damnation.

Edwards frequently uses the device of antithesis to emphasize the radical contrast between human weakness and corrupted reason and God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and righteousness. Antithesis, like amplification, is a fundamental rhetorical strategy in Sinners. Typically, Edwards counters a false assumption he attributes to his audience with a declaration of human beings’ true relation to God, informed by the tenets of Calvinist theology. In the first proof, he contrasts the limited power of an earthly prince with the unlimited power of God to destroy His enemies, and he uses antithesis in the second proof’s observation that wickedness demands divine justice: “[…] divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection to God’s using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins” (627). Edwards voices his listener’s secret hope that divine justice will grant the sinner clemency for his wickedness and then disabuses him of that notion by insisting that justice itself cries out for eternal punishment. Similarly, he declares that if the sinner cries to God for pity, “he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that he’ll only tread you under foot” (636-37). By means of antithesis, Edwards demolishes his listeners’ likely rationalizations and comforting delusions.

In the Application section of the sermon, Edwards uses apostrophe, or direct address, to implicate his audience in the terrifying scenario he has previously outlined, awaken them, and urge them to seek salvation in Christ. The repetitive use of “you” and “your,” coupled with the full panoply of rhetorical and literary devices he brings to bear in the section, is intended to intensify the psychological and emotional tension. The Application begins with an indictment: “This that you have heard is the case of everyone of you that are out of Christ. […] You are probably not sensible of this […]. Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell […]” (631-32). Similarly, the most frequently quoted passage of the sermon begins with an imprecatory apostrophe: “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit […]” (634). The sermon concludes with an impassioned apostrophe addressed to the elders, youth, and children in the congregation, imploring each group to take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity God has provided them to accept His gift of grace and salvation before the offer is permanently withdrawn.

Edwards employs imagined dialogue in the sermon to dramatize the despair of sinners who died before conversion and lament their miserable folly in hell: “No, I never intended to come here […]. [Death] came as a thief: Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness!” (630). Similarly, Edwards’s strategy of addressing and refuting the false assumptions of sinners regarding their fate relies upon an imagined dialogue. Edwards voices his listeners’ silent objections to his doctrine and then systematically refutes these self-serving illusions by the force of logic and evidence.

Edwards frequently uses figurative language to illustrate his theological argument and terrify his audience with graphic visualizations of their inescapable mortality and spiritual peril. The burden of sin is likened to a leaden weight dragging the sinner down to hell; God’s wrath is like rising floodwaters threatening to sweep away the unconverted or a bow stretched taut to release the arrows of divine justice. The sinner is a loathsome spider or insect, helplessly dangled by God over the fires of eternal damnation, or a malevolent serpent that is inconceivably hateful to God’s pure eye.

These metaphors and similes are part of a network of images in the sermon that consist of three basic types: the fires of hell, the symbols of God’s wrath, and metaphorical depictions of fallen man’s predicament. God’s righteous anger is represented in similes of pressure or tension (e.g., floodwaters; a strung bow; thunderclouds), while man’s weakness and sinfulness are depicted in metaphors and images of suspension (a hanging spider) and weight (lead; falling rock). Edwards repeatedly uses images in which immense destructive energies are restrained by God’s will but continually on the verge of release. His allusions to Newton’s theory of gravity in images likening sin to the weight of material objects falling toward earth demonstrates his incorporation of Enlightenment science and natural philosophy in his Calvinist theology.

Edwards uses parallelism and opposition at multiple levels—verbal, grammatical, and semantic—and often in juxtaposition. The following passage from the Application combines parallelism, opposition, repetition, negation, and parataxis to humble the sinner:

Were it not that so is the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies (632).

The grammatical parallelism of the clauses is counterpointed by the opposition of “creation” and “creature,” and “sun,” “earth,” and “air,” while Edwards contrasts the unwillingness of nature to serve the needs of sinful man with the sinner’s willful servitude to Satan.

A diligent scholar of the Bible, Edwards was intimately attuned to the verbal and syntactical rhythms of the Greek and Hebrew texts that comprise the Old and New testaments. The prose style of Sinners echoes the cadences of biblical syntax in its use or omission of conjunctions (polysyndeton and asyndeton) and the related syntactical style of parataxis (omission of connectives, such as “when” and “although”). Edwards frequently alternates between polysyndeton and asyndeton within a single sentence to produce the effect of sweeping momentum of thought. The example of accumulatio quoted at the beginning of this section demonstrates the rapid shifting between polysyndeton and asyndeton, as Edwards links clauses together with “and” and “neither” and then abruptly juxtaposes clauses without connective conjunctions. This combination of literary devices creates a sense of urgency, energy, and exigency. Another example of polysyndeton occurs in Edwards’s image of the helpless sinner perched over hell, which is likewise a classic example of amplification:

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock (632).