Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God By Jonathan Edwards

The first settlers of the colonies were profound Puritans. They believed heavily in God’s righteousness and sovergnty. In his sermon, Sinners in the hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards intended to show both God’s power and man’s depraved nature. Edwards begins his sermon by discussing man’s corrupted ways, “…Natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it…”(Edwards 106). Edwards shows the Puritan belief that all man are cursed through no fault of their own. Puritans spend their life trying to be perfect, yet still believe they are all doomed to the same fate. Edwards later proclaims, “You have offended [God] infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his

Benjamin Franklin, a Deist author, kept an autobiographical journal of the areas in his life in which he wished to improve on entitled, The Autobiography. After making a list of these virtues, Franklin writes, “My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time…”(Franklin 169). He chooses to work on one issue at a time. Franklin used a logical, scientific approach to improving his life. Franklin shows how Deist will recognize a problem or trend and either accept it as truth, or try to fix it. Just arriving in Philadelphia, Franklin notes, “[I] asked for a biscuit intending such as we had in Boston; but they it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So… I bade him to give me a three-penny of any sort”(Franklin 168). Franklin was accustomed to the culture in Boston, and believed life elsewhere was similar. Franklin further proves the Deist philosophy that people’s opinions and beliefs are based primarily on past

The Romantics wanted to create a sense of identity for Americans, often by exploring topics that had previously been avoided, such as human nature. In Washington Irving’s Dark Romantic short story, The Devil and Tom Walker Irving shows the five points of Romanticism; including focus on emotion, nature, youth, imagination and people themselves. During his unhappy marriage, Tom Walker decides to take a stroll through the woods where he meets the Devil who, in turn, offers to buy the man’s soul. Irving writes, “However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction… Tom was not to be damned to please her” (Irving 295). Irving displays in this quote Tom’s ability to decide for himself. This also illustrates a very cleaver plot, showing the Romantic theme of the importance of one’s imagination. Tom, looking for his wife, saw her apron in a tree, “As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the chec ked apron, but, woeful sight! Found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it!” (Irving 296). While showing a cleaver plot once more, Irving displays an extremely dark subject; the death of a loved one. Until the dark