“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours.  You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship:  yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.”

Under such teachings the girl of colonial New England grew into womanhood; with such thoughts in mind she saw her children go down into the grave; with such forebodings she herself passed out into an uncertain Hereafter.  Nor was there any escape from such sermons; for church attendance was for many years compulsory, and even when not compulsory, was essential for those who did not wish to be politically and socially ostracized.  The preachers were not, of course, required to give proof for their declarations; they might well have announced, “Thus saith the Lord,” but they preferred to enter into disquisitions bristling with arguments and so-called logical deductions.  For instance, note in Edwards’ sermon, Why Saints in Glory will Rejoice to see the Torments of the Damned, the chain of reasoning leading to the conclusion that those enthroned in heaven shall find joy in the unending torture of their less fortunate neighbors: 

“They will rejoice in seeing the justice of God glorified in the sufferings of the damned.  The misery of the damned, dreadful as it is, is but what justice requires.  They in heaven will see and know it much more clearly than any of us do here.  They will see how perfectly just and righteous their punishment is and therefore how properly inflicted by the supreme Governor of the world....  They will rejoice when they see him who is their Father and eternal portion so glorious in his justice.  The sight of this strict and immutable justice of God will render him amiable and adorable in their eyes.  It will occasion rejoicing in them, as they will have the greater sense of their own happiness, by seeing the contrary misery.  It is the nature of pleasure and pain, of happiness and misery, greatly