Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Language Analysis

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All people are born sinners. Natural men must be reborn to be saved; “…hell is waiting for them…” (Edwards 46). These views are that of Jonathan Edwards in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Edwards belonged to a religion that was lingering and was close to disappearing due to the growing numbers of Christians, so he used figurative language and imagery in order to scare people back into the Puritan way of life. “Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell.” (Edwards 47). Jonathan Edwards uses violent, hellish, figurative language to show people what will happen if they are not reborn into the Puritan way. The way the author uses this scare tactic makes the reader feel uneasy…show more content…
The way he describes everything is full of detail and vivid description that can really almost make one feel as if they were experiencing what he was describing. His hopes were that people would read it and realize what will happen to them if they did not convert. The types of words he used were blunt and to the point. They were harsh and real, not skimping out on the detail. This frightened the people of the time because no one knows exactly what will happen in the end of it all, when you die, but no one wants to live a life of hell, pain and torture. “The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up.” (Edwards 46). The piece was written at the beginning of the Great Awakening, when the old Puritan ways were fading and the Christian religion was rising. Because the Puritan religion was becoming a thing of the past, the reverends used scare tactics to drive the “unregenerate” Christians who had not confessed to being born again into God’s grace, into thinking that they were not saved. The Great Awakening caused mass hysteria from the fear instilled in the people of the
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