" A man's
election to salvation depended on God's foreordination. If the man was not
elected, he was justly treated, for he merely received his deserts. Even
Jonathan Edwards, in spite of his sweet nature, felt bound to preach hell
fire in terms of the old Puritan theology. In one of his sermons, he
says:--
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider,
or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully
provoked; his wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as
worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire."
This quotation was not given when we discussed the works of Edwards,
because it misrepresents his most often recurring idea of God. But the fact
that even he felt impelled to preach such a sermon shows most emphatically
that Puritan theology exerted its influence by presenting more vivid
pictures of God's wrath than of his love.
A tremendous reaction from such beliefs came in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), pastor of the
Federal Street Church in Boston and one of the greatest leaders of this
religious reform, wrote in 1809 of the old Puritan creed:--
"A man of plain sense, whose spirit has not been broken to this creed by
education or terror, will think that it is not necessary for us to travel
to heathen countries, to learn how mournfully the human mind may
misrepresent the Deity.
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