Edwards catalyzed the revivals known as the Great Awakening.
The extreme pathos appeal to fear made in this sermon sets the tone for a lot of what the sermons sounded like during the Great Awakening time period. This fear preaching of fear of fire and brimstone was intended to scare people into the church.
And you children that are unconverted, don’t you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God that is now angry with you every day, and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of kings?
The options given here are conversion or alienation at every level.
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. 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 hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell;
Further, Edwards pleas with the people to change their ways. He shows his disgust with them and explains how God shares greater disgust. This is a pathos fear appeal to scare the people into conforming to his morals.
you find you are kept out of hell, but don’t see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it….
In this, Edwards is calling upon the people to be humble and see that they alone are not responsible for their fortune or misfortune.