Question

What kind of imagery did Jonathan Edwards use in his sermons and to what effect?

Answer 1

A fire and brimstone preacher, Jonathan Edwards was a stalwart Puritan and much of his Calvinist background is apparent in the frightening imagery of his sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." In fact, the image of the bottomless pit of hell whose fiery floods wax high enough to burn the gossamer thread that holds the unworthy souls over it evoked so much terror in the congregation of Edwards that women fainted and men became terrorized and trembled.
This sermon of Edwards is constructed around a passage from Deuteronomy in the Old Testament of the King James Version of the Bible: "Their foot shall slide in due time." Using the metaphor of a slippery slide, Edwards, at a revival where his famous sermon was given, points to the dangers of spiritual sliding. The yawning abyss waits for the sinners, whose wickedness makes them "heavy as lead," and only the "mere pleasure" of God keeps them from burning in the images of "fiery floods" and "fire of wrath." The image of a "bow" for God's wrath that can easily bend and send forth its arrow is an unnerving one, indeed, as the "slender thread" dangling near the "flames of divine wrath" which can singe it at any moment.