The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet ’tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; ’tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you han’t gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you don’t this very moment drop down into hell.
The stance taken in this sermon is far different from what I usually expect to hear in a sermon today. Rather than suggesting to the reader that one should take God's hand to repay him because he has offered so much, Jonathan Edwards' approach is far more degrading. Starting with the fact that God does not care for us and how we owe ourselves to him because he has allowed us to live another day when he could kill us whenever he so pleases is an interesting approach. The usual idea that God loves all of his creations is stripped away and now his role in a person's life and death is exemplified while accompanied with the idea that God is not only willing to end our lives, but he is waiting for the day to come so he can. During the 1700s, religion played a larger role in peoples lives compared to today's standards. Putting this sermon into that context, it would make sense that this more radical approach would be taken to convert as many people as the possibly could through fear.