In this harsh piece of literature, there are three
infamous figures of speech that Edwards employs and develops to impress the severity of
the judgement of God on his listeners. He firstly compares the wrath of God to damned
waters, with God holding back "the fiery floods". He then compares the wrath of God to a
bent bow, whose tension is increasing as justice prepares to loose the arrow of God's
vengeance upon those "out of Christ". Sinners are compared to "loathsome" spiders held
over the fire and threatened with being dropped into the flames. Consider how one of
these is presented:
The wrath of God is like great waters that are
dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an
outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its
course, when once it is let loose... If God should only withdraw His hand from the
gloodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and
wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with
omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is... it
would be nothing to withstand or endure
it.
This is typical of the
scare tactics and fear that Edwards uses to make his point, but of course this
exaggerated, hyperbolic focus on the wrath of God completely ignores His other
qualities, such as his love, mercy and compassion, which themselves are swept away by
the might flood of wrath described by Edwards, leaving an exaggerated caricature of a
God that is not appealing.
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