The Works of Jonathan Edwards

This section contains an archive of sermons and papers by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a  colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. He is known as one of the greatest and most profound of American theologians and revivalists. His work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Calvinist theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. His famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” emphasized the just wrath of God against sin and contrasted it with the provision of God for salvation; the intensity of his preaching sometimes resulted in members of the audience fainting, swooning, and other more obtrusive reactions. The swooning and other behaviors in his audience caught him up in a controversy over “bodily effects” of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

Absent from the Body
THE apostle in this place is giving a reason why he went on with so much boldness and immovable steadfastness, through such labors, sufferings, and dangers of his life, in the service of his Lord; for which his enemies, the false teachers among the Corinthians, sometimes reproached him as being beside himself, and driven on by a kind of madness.

Christian Knowledge
Paul the apostle makes a complaint against the Christian Hebrews, for their want of such proficiency in the knowledge of the doctrines and mysteries of religion, as might have been expected of them. The apostle complains, that they had not made that progress in their acquaintance with the things taught in the oracles of God, which they ought to have made.

Christ’s Agony
OUR Lord Jesus Christ, in his original nature, was infinitely above all suffering, for he was “God over all, blessed for evermore;” but, when he became man, he was not only capable of suffering, but partook of that nature that is remarkably feeble and exposed to suffering.

God Glorified in Man’s Dependence
The learned Grecians, and their great philosophers, by all their wisdom did not know God, they were not able to find out the truth in divine things. But, after they had done their utmost to no effect, it pleased God at length to reveal himself by the gospel, which they accounted foolishness.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached what is considered by many, to be the best sermon ever preached by any mortal man since Paul the Apostle. It is credited with lighting a bonfire of revival and reformation that swept society during the great awakening.

The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth
“For when, for the time, ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” (Hebrews 5:12) These words are a complaint, which the apostle makes of a certain defect in the Christian Hebrews, to whom he wrote.