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

Puritanism was one of the largest religious group in Colonial America, bringing strong religious views and literature. Anne Bradstreet was a housewife and the first poet to be published in America, showing her religious views and life in poetry. However, there was another Puritan writing and literature. Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan preacher and had emotionally charged sermons meant to terrify and degrade the congregation in hopes of converting them to the extremist view of puritanism. However, despite sharing the same religion, Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards had very different styles of writing and personalities and thoughts of God.

Edwards and Bradstreet have very different personalities and writing styles while still talking

Bradstreet has a welcoming, relatable, and realistic tone, while Edwards has a harsh, brash, and accusatory tone. You can see these personality differences in the poem Upon the Burning of our House, July 10th, 1666 by Anne Bradstreet and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. In the poem, Bradstreet keeps a calm and relaxed attitude in her poem while talking about her house burning down. In the poem Upon the Burning of our House, Bradstreet thinks to herself “adieu, adieu, all’s vanity” (36). This was her accepting that her house was disappearing and saying everything on earth is not worth it . However, in Edwards sermon he is scaring the churchgoers while talking about something as simple as death. He states , trying to scare non-converts “unconverted men walk of a pit of hell on a rotten covering and there

Edwards shows God as an omnipotent killer that will take your life if you do not convert to his belief system. Edward shows an extremist view of Puritanism, while Bradstreet shows a softer, more accepting view. She recognizes God as the reason for everything in her life. This view shown in the poem, when she states “I blest His name that gave and took.”, revealing that Bradstreet believes God not only provides but takes away. Therefore, God is responsible for all things good and bad. Bradstreet states, “A price so vast as is unknown Yet by his gift is made thine own/ There's wealth enough, I need no more,/ Farewell my pelf, farewell my store/ The world no longer let me love/ My hope and treasure lies above” (49) in Upon the Burning of our House. This means that even though that her earthly possessions are destroyed she knows that Heaven and God are waiting for her and will provide all she needs. In Bradstreet's life, God is first, God leads her salvation, and she was temperate in all actions and descriptions. However, Edwards was an extremist. He was not temperate in life being very detailed and articulate in his terrifying image of