He uses them to scare the congregation into believing in God, which is important since God is angry with them. In one of the similes he is comparing lions to devils, devils that wish to devour our souls and drag them to the horrid place called hell, “The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey and expect to have I, but are for the present kept back; if God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls...”, manifesting in a form, that without God in one 's life, the devils will drag them all to hell, but with God there they are safe because he stops them. When he mentions how hells mouth will be open for the people, he is indicating that hell is waiting for them, because the devil knows that they are awful sinners, and so does God, adduced by using personification, “Hell opens his mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost...”, once they are in hell, there is no escape into heaven. Lastly, a strong metaphor used in his scare tactic is, “O Sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in, 'Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the …show more content…
He doesn’t use innumberable other emotions that are not related to fear, because fear is the easiest way to save the people. Here is one of multiple examples given, “Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless with many that are now in this congregation, that it may be are at ease and quieter, than he is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell.”, when saying this, it puts fear into the people that they are going to hell, which no Christian wants. “That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity: when God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor Soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom…”, Edwards is explaining that God will send one to hell with no mercy and he will watch as they plummet into hell, not trying to save them because that is what they deserve. Another example is God will feel mercy for some of the people in hell afterwards, but, “...once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God as to any regard to your welfare; God will have no other use to put you to but only to suffer misery; of an angry God you shall be continued in