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Compare And Contrast Jonathan Edwards And Upon The Burning Of Our House

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A Burning Devotion to God People want something to look forward to after their lifetime. For the Puritans God is what they look forward to. To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet, Upon the Burning of Our House by Anne Bradstreet, and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards perceive God in different ways. After analysing Bradstreet and Edward’s poems I have found many differences in their styles of writing and views of God, yet they lead to a common conclusion. Bradstreet has a less intense and more happy writing style and portrays God as someone to be praised and thankful for, while Edwards is way more intense in his writing style and portrays God as someone who should be feared while also praised and followed. …show more content…

These two authors definitely have opposing views of God and the way they portray him. Yet they still seem to have a common concluding message to tell others. Bradstreet portrays God as someone to be praised and thankful for. She is very thankful to God that he gave her someone was amazing and awesome as her loving husband. She explains how she loves him with all of her heart and how he is truly a gift from God. She couldn’t have asked for a better husband and she knows God gave her such a loving husband because she is faithful and praises him for everything he does for her. She finds God to be someone to look up to. Bradstreet is grateful to have God in her life and to be able to know that God will always be there for her when she needs him. Edwards on the other hand, has diverse views. He portrays God as someone who should be feared while also praised and followed. Edwards says, “God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing to make it appear, that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man, at any moment….” (126). He makes it seem like God can take you out at any moment and send you to hell without another thought about it. This shows how intense he is and how he makes people fear God more than want to follow him. Bradstreet and Edwards have different views, …show more content…

Edwards is way more intense he thinks that if you don’t have God in your life you are going to be dammed to hell. He is so serious about the fact that everyone needs to know and believe in God. Edwards says, “It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery” (128). He is saying that without God in your life you will be eternally tortured and unhappy. Bradstreet is much more happy and welcoming with her writing. She gives a sense that everything is going to be okay because God is there with her. She doesn’t let the devastation of her house along with all of her belongings burning to the ground disappoint her. She sees the bright side of it. She knows that she will have double what she had on earth in heaven. Bradstreet knows that God will take care of her and be there for her in this time of struggle. She is saying that even though she may not have everything she used to she will have all she needs and more in heaven. Bradstreet shares with her readers a sense of hope and comfort in the future. For this time period that was what the Puritans were about, knowing and believe that God will always be there for them. They knew and believed that God will always have their backs, will take care of them, and will reward them in heaven. This poem shows how Bradstreet knew

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The Colonial Period was from 1492 to 1763. During this time many new writing styles and opinions were established by various different writers. Anne Bradstreet, a female poet known as the first Colonial settler and the first woman in England to publish a book of poems. One of her famous poems, “ The Burning of Our House”, refers back to religion and her belief in God/Him many times. The last line of the poem, “ My hope and treasure lies above”, influences the theme to be, spiritual possessions are more important than material possessions.

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Jonathan Edwards was a great American theologian who was an eighteenth century Puritan preacher who delivered a six hour sermon in 1741, Connecticut to a congregation of Puritans. The purpose was to convince the congregation into seeking salvation by accepting God and to convince the unholy if they continued their ways they would end up in hell. To convince his audience Edwards uses rhetorical devices such as metaphor repetition and bandwagon to invoke fear into his audience. During Edwards Sermon he uses metaphor when describing God. In his sermon he states that God is a higher being who's hand is holding us, the sinners, above the fiery pits of hell.

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He appeals to the congregation when he says “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you…” by displaying how strong and powerful God really is. He wanted the people to picture this gruesome image that describes how weak people are in comparison to God’s power. Edwards make God seem merciless when He deals with sinners of the congregation, and wants them to fear God’s punishment against those who wrong Him. He begins to end his sermon by saying “…a day wherein Christ has flung the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners…”. He said this to appeal to unconverted men ethically and emotionally by describing how Christ is calling for the people of the congregation to return to him and recant all their sins.

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Edwards also implements the rhetorical question, “who knows the power of Gods anger?” this presents the question of who will suffer the eternal dreadful misery. The answer of who is able to escape his anger is the ones who repent and are born again. The whole sermon is an entire repetitive restatement exemplifying Gods mighty wrath and our only chance of salvation is to be reborn, to develop a more personal intimate relationship with God. An only this way he pardons our sins and allows us to exult in

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The Play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, is a book that explains the salem witch trials and how it relates to the cold war. During the cold war and the red scare everybody was scared that they were gonna get tried for being a communist. Everybody was scared in the crucible also. Arthur Miller explained the relationship really good. He used many different satirical devices, such as parody, incongruity and exaggeration.

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Bradstreet and Edwards both had strong faith but they had different ways of interpreting it. Bradstreet’s faith was more compassionate and she thought God was loving and caring. For example, the narrator states, “And to my God my heart did cry to strengthen me in my distress and not to leave me succorless" (Bradstreet The Burning 8-10). She is asking God to help her through a hard time and she believes that God will help her. Bradstreet also believed that if she believed in God and followed him, she would go to heaven someday.

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While both poets try to be optimistic about the death of their loved ones, Wheatley, the more religious poet of the two, emphasizes the importance of religion by using her almost artistic sculpting of descriptive adjectives and robust nouns such as “The glowing stars and silver queen of light/ At last must perish in the gloom of night” and in using this word choice, she shows how much weight her religion holds (19-20). As Wheatley praises her God and his doings in her poem, Bradstreet makes sure to underline how much her relationship with her husband and kids mean to her. “Look to my little babes, my dear remains./ And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,/

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Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House” seem at first glance quite similar to one another regarding context, however, after taking a closer look, it becomes apparent that there are some substantial differences. These differences cannot be understood without the knowledge of cultural context concerning the Puritan belief system and their lifestyle. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was written with the sole purpose of scaring and intimidating the people that purtinans believed to be sinners. Edwards’s work contributed to a movement called “The Great Awakening”. It’s objective was to make the so-called ‘sinners’ aware of their wrongdoings and compel them to repent.

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Both Bradstreet and Edwards are puritan writers, they are both believe in a higher more powerful God. In their writings “Upon the Burning of Our House”, by Anne Bradstreet and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, by Jonathan Edwards they both talk about the higher being of God. They both are powerful writers and have a way of getting their points across, but they do it differently. They are both great writers and even though they have different religious views and different writing styles both of their poems, “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards, have the same goal of converting people.

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She now fully understands where her treasure lies and how the things of this earth are in no way comparable to the life that eternity has to offer. In the world today, many people have this same mentality: that earthly treasures are more important than those of eternal value. People in today’s world value many things that will have no value to them at the end of their life and unfortunately, it usually takes some drastic event, like Bradstreet’s house fire, to understand the true value of Eternity. People can still learn from Bradstreet’s discovery, that the things of this earth are of very little worth compared to sharing eternity with the

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During the colonial period many settlers came to the New World to escape persecution for their Puritan beliefs. Writers such as William Bradford, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, and Mary Rowlandson all shared their experiences and religious devotion throughout their literature that ultimately inspired and influenced settlers to follow. This essay will discuss the similarities in Anne Bradstreet and Mary Rowlandson’s work as they both describe their experiences as signs from God. Anne Bradstreet came to the New World as a devoted Puritan as she repeatedly talked about it in her poetry. In her poems she discusses many tragedies that happened in her life such as; the burning of her house and the death of her two grandchildren all of which she thinks were signs from God.

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Jonathan Edwards once said: “Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.” Since birth (October 5th, 1703), Jonathan has always been a devoted Puritan which explains why he began the Great Awakening, along with George Whitefield. Edwards started preaching and wanted people to reconvert to Puritanism. His work, “Sinners at the Angry Hands of God,” was written on July 8, 1741.

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/ The sentence past is most irrevocable.” Here “the sentence past” is in reference to Eve and the forbidden fruit and how because of her actions, all women were sentenced to suffer through childbirth and all humankind must inevitably die. Bradstreet recognizes this; she speaks of her own mortality and is accepting of it. This is important because it showcases Bradstreet’s religious beliefs. Even at times in which her main concern is of her family, Bradstreet’s faith is present at all times.

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Bradstreet knows the goodness in God and rather than fearing him she thanks Him or asks for help. While her house was burning she asked God “to strengthen [her] in [her] time of distress”(9) because she knows everything that happens is through the will of God and only He can help her through this difficult situation. Bradstreet sees God as a just one even though he took all of her physical possessions. She takes His justness a step further by saying in lines 18 and 19 that even if He took all of her belongings, it would still be reasonable. Bradstreet also believes in a positive afterlife for herself and most people around her.

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At the end though she still believes that the child is in good hands of God, in belief that it happened for a reason. Finally, in the third poem, her grandson dies. She throws questions more toward God on why he would remove her loved one from this earth so soon. Bradstreet is merely in depression, yet she finds courage at the end and believes that something good will be coming their way after the loss.

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