Excerpt From "A Narrative of Surprising Conversions," by Jonathan Edwards

This excerpt comes from Edwards treatise on "A Narrative of Surprising Conversions" in "Jonathan Edwards on Revival," pages 30-31. As he recounts the outpouring of the mercy and grace of God in the multiplicity of conversions in that day, he admonishes other ministers to preach and counsel with doctrines that in the contemporary methodology of preaching and counseling might seem contrary, self-defeating, and, at best, paradoxical, but to Edwards bore the pastorally enjoyable fruit of authenticity of conversion. I have interposed breaks in this lengthy paragraph and the parenthesis belong to me as a means of explanation, as well as any italics. He writes:

"Whatever minister has a like occasion to deal with souls, in a flock under such circumstances, as this was in the last year, I cannot but think he will soon find himself under a necessity, greatly to insist upon it with them, that God is under no manner of obligation to show mercy to any natural man, whose heart is not turned to God: and that a man can challenge nothing either in absolute justice, or by free promise, from any thing he does before he has believed on Jesus Christ, or has true repentance begun in him. (This being the case) It appears to me, that if I had taught those who came to me under trouble any other doctrine (than the absolute sovereignty of God in life, death, and salvation, etc.), I should have taken a direct course utterly to undo them (from what the Spirit of God was doing in them, that is, extending to them the grace of fear and spiritual examination leading to conversion. In other words, he did not pamper their presumptions that they were saved, and therefore he continues...) I should have directly crossed what was plainly the drift of the Spirit of God in his influences upon them; for if they had believed what I said, it would either have promoted self-flattery and carelessness, and so put an end to their awakenings (see parenthesis above); or cherished and established their contention and stife with God, concerning his dealings with them and others, and blocked up their way to that humiliation before the Sovereign Disposer of life and death, whereby God is wont to prepare them for his consolations.

And yet those who have been under awakenings have oftentimes plainly stood in need of being encouraged, by being told of the infinite and all-sufficient mercy of God in Christ; and (also being told) that it is God's manner to succeed diligence, and to bless his own means, that so awakenings and encouragements, fear and hope, may be duly mixed and proportioned to preserve their minds in a just medium (middle place) between the two extremes of self-flattery and despondence, both which tend to slackness and negligence, and in the end to (a false sense of)security.

I think I have found that no discourses have been more remarkably blessed, than those in which the doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty with regard to the salvation of sinners, and his just liberty with regard to answering the prayers, or succeeding the pains, of natural men, continuing such, have been insisted on. I never found so much immediate saving fruit, in any measure, of any discourses I have offered to my congregation, as some from these words, Rom. iii. 19. 'That every mouth may be stopped'; endeavoring to show from thence (that text), that it would be just with God for ever to reject and cast off mere natural men."