Often remembered as the prototypical “fire and brimstone” sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” reflects the complicated religious background of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but by Newtonian physics. As unpalatable as Edwards’s message might have been, his significance can’t be doubted, and from a rhetorical perspective his sermon is among the greatest American examples of the form. Independent of its theological content, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is a harbinger of American Romanticism, a literary work that prefigured Poe and Hawthorne, Melville and Lovecraft, in its intimations of a terrifying and alien God.
SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
Deuteronomy XXXII. 35.—Their foot shall slide in due time.
In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, that were God’s visible people, and lived under means of grace; and that notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works that he had wrought towards that people, yet remained, as is expressed verse 28, void of counsel, having no understanding in them; and that, under all the cultivations of heaven, brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text.
The expression that I have chosen for my text, Their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following things relating to the punishment and destruction that these wicked Israelites were exposed to.
That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction’s coming upon them, being represented by their foot’s sliding. The same is expressed, Psalm LXXIII. 18: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places; thou castedst them down into destruction.”
It implies that they were always exposed to sudden, unexpected destruction; as he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he can’t foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without warning, which is also expressed in that Psalm LXXIII. 18, 19: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment!”
Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.