92SermonsofJonathanEdwards (continued)
though they hate angels and saints in heaven for their holiness, have yet no love one to another. Though they all agree in being perfectly wicked, yet they hate one another with implacable hatred, and are continually mortifying and tormenting one another so that hell is a world of perfect malice and contention.
3. They refuse to accept of heaven as it is. Yet they would not like it if it were otherwise. As has been observed before, they have no relish for the holy enjoyments and employments of heaven. They dislike heaven for its holiness, and yet they would not like it if it were unholy. For then they would be liable to the same troubles and vexations in heaven that they meet with in this world. If it were not that heaven differs from this world in holiness, it would be as full of pride and malice, envy, revenge, contention, injustice, violence, and cruelty, as this world is, and so would be as vexatious a world as this is. Wicked men are as liable to the trouble and vexation of the world, which arise from those things, as godly men, and in some respects more so, for they have no divine supports against those things, no safer portion to which their hearts betake themselves.
Third, the things that wicked men choose, imply an inconsistency in their own nature. The things which they would have are impossibilities and self-contradictions.
1. They would have a sufficient Savior, and not a holy one. They would not have a holy Savior, because such a Savior does not at all agree with their lusts. But yet they would have a sufficient Savior, one that is sufficient to save them from hell, and so one that is sufficient to make a proper atonement for all their sins, to make full satisfaction to the justice of God, that they may escape the penalty of that justice. But these things prove a great inconsistency, for how is it possible that a Savior, who is not perfectly holy himself, should make satisfaction for the unholiness of others? How is it possible that one who deserves to suffer the eternal wrath of God himself for his own sin, should by his sufferings appease God's wrath for the sin of others?