92SermonsofJonathanEdwards (continued)
For the present, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the tossing sea, saying, "This far you may come and no farther;" but if God should withdraw that restraining power, it would soon sweep away everything in its path. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, the soul would become perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is unrestrained and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God's restraints, whereas if it were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a basin of sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone.
7. Wicked men cannot find even a moment's security in the fact that death does not appear to be at hand. The unbelieving man has no security in the fact that he is healthy, and that he cannot perceive of any accident taking him out of the world, and that there is no visible danger in any of his circumstances. The diverse and continual experience of the world in all ages shows this is no evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world.
The unseen, unthought of ways and means of persons suddenly being taken out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday; the sharpest eyesight cannot discern them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing that indicates that God needs to use a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of His providence, to destroy any wicked man at any moment. All the options of taking sinners out of the world, are in God's hands, and so universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination, that it depends merely upon the will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell.