English Notes Agry God
Jonathon Edwards was quite known for his most famous sermon “from the sinners in the hands of an angry God. ” He often called people sinners and scared them in to believing that they were all going to hell. Edwards uses many rhetorical devices in his sermon, such as: figurative language; fear,parallel structure, and lastly repetition. J. Edwards used a lot of figurative language in his sermon. It seems like in every other sentence there is either a simile or a metaphor or at least something with imagery. Such as ” there is a dreadful Pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God. Or there is “the wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present. ” I think Edwards was using the figurative language not only to make people think but to also keep them interested , and to keep them listening to him. An example of imagery that he said in his sermon would be “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, mush as one who holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire. ” Jonathon had a way with figurative language. Edwards caused a lot of people to fear him, and also what he was talking about. Most people started to believe what Edwards was saying in his sermon.
This is an example of people believing what they hear. When Edwards made the people fear him, he got more popular, not really the good type of popular either . Once the people started to fear him, they also started to believe what he was saying. Which scared them into listening more. Most of the people did what ever to un-become a sinner. Jonathon used a lot of parallel structure and repetition in his sermon. He seemed to have wrote a lot of the same things over just differently. Edwards used the repetition of certain words, many times such as: hell, God, fire, sinners.
Some people may think that his entire sermon was just about those four words. An example of parallel structure is ” to see many others feasting , while you are pining and perishing! ” These were to make the people think while they were listening. In result of the figurative language, the fear he caused, and the parallel structure and repetition all caused the people to listen to what he had to say . Even though he was calling them all sinners. These people believed in what Jonathon Edwards ha to say, mainly because they were scared. The words he used in this sermon helped make these people listen/ believe .
