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His picture of pushing sinners into the broad hideous pit is contrary to Biblical teaching which
portrays demons as prime victims of Hell. Yet in this stanza his imagery is reminiscent of that of
Dante and other Tours of Hell.
In a sermon on Mark 9:48 he wrote:
It is confessed, that a discourse on this dreadful subject is not a direct ministration of
grace and the glad tidings of salvation, yet it has a great and happy tendency to the same
end, even the salvation of sinful men; for it awakens them to a more piercing sight and to
a keen sensation of their own guilt and danger; it possesses their spirits with a more lively
sense of misery, it fills them with a holy dread of divine punishment and excites the
powerful passion of fear to make them fly from the wrath to come, and betake themselves
to the grace of God revealed in the gospel.
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Watts did not hesitate to use Hellfire material in order to instill such fear in sinners as to motivate
them to turn to God in Christ to be saved from that horrid fate.

2. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
a. General Information
Jonathan Edwards became a Christian while a student at Yale. Both a tutor at Yale and a
pastor, he became a powerful preacher. God used him as a major instrument in the Great
Awakening (1734-1735) and in a more extensive revival (1740-1741). Later he was a frontier
pastor in Stockton, Massachusetts and a missionary to nearby American Indians. A month after
being inaugurated President of Princeton, he died from the effects of a smallpox injection.
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Outstanding as both a philosopher and a theologian, Edwards was especially significant
for our topic since he was a prolific writer who produced numerous discussions of Hell from a
traditionalist perspective. Although famous for his sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God," he devoted even more sermons and essays to Heaven than to Hell! He also produced other
important, perceptive, scholarly writings.
b. Unavoidable/Intolerable Punishment
In his sermon, "The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable,"
Edwards made it clear that in Hell there will be no possibility of any alternatives available to
sinners in this present life.
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For them there will be no deliverance, no effective intercession to
God for them, no appeasing God to soften the ferocity of His wrath and punishment, no relief or
rest from their intense suffering in Hell, and no way to escape this dire situation. The
hopelessness of their condition will make their pain unbearable. Nevertheless powerless against
God, they will have to endure their unbearable punishment forever. This will include both the
affliction of physical pain to the body and the anguished awareness of the soul of its complete
loss of any fellowship with or blessing from God.
Edwards pictured the anguish and intense pain of endless torment in Hell in imagery
reminiscent of the Tours of Hell. He wrote:

The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the
wicked shall be overwhelmed which shall always be in tempest, in which they shall be