Submitted by: Submitted by mungerbean
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Category: Literature
Date Submitted: 11/25/2014 08:30 AM
Moore 1
Claire Moore Mr. Willard 11 American Lit Flex 25 August 2014 Often in religious literature, nature is used as proof of God’s love and mercy. In Anne Bradstreet’s “Contemplations, 2” Bradstreet asks if “so much excellence abide below, how much excellent is he that dwells on high?” (6). She praises God for his “power and beauty by his works” (6), referring to his creation of the world, and writes that the beauty of the natural world is evidence of God’s “goodness, wisdom, glory, light” (6). Anne Bradstreet’s views God’s character, however, starkly contrast those of Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher. In “Sinners In the Hands of An Angry God,” Edwards uses vibrant imagery of scenes from nature including wildlife, water, and weather to express a dark depiction of a wrathful God who wants to destroy all sinners. Jonathan Edwards uses descriptions of insects and animals as a basis for his claim that God is full of vengeance and wants to punish sinners by destruction. Edwards describes God holding “you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire” (110). The comparison between people and insects, reveals Edwards opinion that God views mankind as insignificant filth and as something the needs to disposed of. Just as one would smash an insect one found in one’s home, revolted, so God holds sinners, disposing of them to Hell as he pleases. Edwards thus emphasizes that humans are filthy and unworthy of God’s salvation and love. Edward then continues with imagery of wildlife, exclaiming to his congregation, “you are ten thousand times so abominable in His eyes as the most hateful
Moore 2
venomous Serpent is in ours” (110). The repugnance humans feel towards snakes, God feels amplified ten thousand times towards mankind. Not only is God apathetic towards our fate, but according to Edwards, God literally abhors sinners. This comparison of humans to serpents ...