9
become obvious. As fearful as this experience of suffering and torment is for all sinners,
it is even worse for these hypocrites.
Reasons for the Fear of the Sinners in Zion
In the third section of the exposition of the doctrine, Edwards provides several
reasons why sinners in Zion will be surprised by fear.
'em, because they will know that they are going to be cast into devouring fire. There is
nothing that seems to give one a more terrible idea of torment and misery than to think of
being cast alive into a fire, especially if we conceive of the soul's remaining quick,
sinners as a "devouring fire . . . of extraordinary fierceness of heat." It is a "furnace of
fire. Furnaces are contrived for an extreme degree of heat, the purposes of which they are
designed to requiring it, such as the running and refining of metals, and the melting
things into glass. . . . Now if a person should be brought to the mouth of such a furnace,
and there should see how the fire seemed to glow, so as presently to make everything that
was cast into it all over white and bright with fire, and should know that he was now
directly going to be cast into this furnace, would not fearfulness surprise him?"
Edwards draws on several illustrations to emphasize the horror of the fate which
awaits the wicked. First, he views an "image of the burning of dead souls in the pit of
hell" in the practice in "some heathen countries" of disposing of dead bodies, which he
describes as "to dig a great pit, and to put in it a great quantity of fuel, and to put the dead
21
His claim that these reasons are "spoken of in the text" seems difficult to validate ("Sinners in
Zion," 275). He does not provide exegetical support for this claim in what follows, neither from the text of
Is 33 nor from the remainder of the biblical canon.
22
"Sinners in Zion," 275.
23
"Sinners in Zion," 275.