Rhetorical Devices In Sinners

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is a Puritan sermon from the eighteenth century during the Great Awakening. During this time, Puritans had strayed from the church due to the church’s strict guidelines and regulations and begun to embrace more secular thought. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, was written to motivate people to join the newly refined church that embraced these secular thoughts. Jonathan Edwards uses rhetorical devices throughout his sermon to show God’s wrath on sinners and to instill the fear of God in Puritans. Jonathan Edward’s was a well respected clergyman of eighteenth century New England. His theocratic authority appealed to his audience when he made claims about God. Edwards’s claims the Puritans have angered …show more content…

As a result of straying from the church, Edwards tells the Puritans they belong in Hell. Edward’s uses the Puritans fear of Hell along with rhetorical devices to get the audience to rejoin the church. Hell becomes more realistic through the words of Edwards. He tells the Puritans, “Hell is gaping for them”, meaning Satan wants to be united with the sinners. Edwards elaborates on his claim and states if God were to spare the audience now, they would “immediately sink and plunge into a bottomless gulf” of Hell. This dramatic imagery shows the Puritans that God will no longer come to their rescue because the Puritans have chosen to serve Satan. Edwards tries to reach his audience by saying Hell is a “great furnace of wrath” where sinners belong. This description of Hell shows Edwards belief that sinners will pay for not serving God by facing God’s wrath in Hell. Each claim made by Jonathan Edwards motivates the audience to stop serving Satan in order to escape the “very misery to all eternity” that is Hell.

The ideas presented in Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, are intensified by the use of rhetorical devices. Edward’s successfully preaches to his Puritan audience about the horridness of God’s wrath with the use of rhetoric. Sermons, such as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, contributed to the redirecting of the