92SermonsofJonathanEdwards (continued)
easy for us to cut a slender thread that anything hangs by: therefore it easy for God, when He pleases, to throw His enemies down into hell. What are we, that we should think that we can stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the mountains collapse?
2. They "deserve" to be thrown into hell; and divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yes, on the contrary, justice calls out loud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?" (Luke 13:7). Every moment the sword of divine justice is waved over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back.
3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They not only justly deserve to be thrown down there, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and unchangeable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are already bound over to hell. John 3:18, "Whoever does not believe stands condemned already." So that every unconverted man rightly belongs to hell: that is his place; from there he has his origin, John 8:23, "You are from below," and he is headed for there; it is the place that justice, and God's word, and the sentence of His unchangeable law, assigns to him.
4. They are now the objects of that very same "anger" and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell. And the reason why they don't go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are under, is not exceedingly angry with them, as He is with the many miserable human beings now tormented in hell, and who there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yes, God is a great deal more angry with the great numbers that are now on earth; yes, doubtless with the many that are now sitting in this congregation, who feel completely at ease, than He is with many of