Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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Josh Vandenburg 10/23/10 American Lit. Compare and Contrast Sinners and Cloth Picture a church service today in modern America. There is a choir singing praises and hymns about God. Little children are in the nursery finger painting the face of Jesus. Kind ministers are preaching about the wonders of forgiveness, heaven, and the Holy Spirit. The minister’s flock is eagerly listening to the word of God. People usually leave church Sunday feeling enlightened by the word of God. Church today is mostly seen as a positive experience. For Puritans in Early America, it was not the same case. Church was not always a fun experience. There was no singing and praising the Lord’s name joyfully. Church would last for hours on end. People were expected to sit on benches quietly and patiently. The sermons rarely gave hope for redemption of the congregation. Ministers in the church preaching the Bible often spoke monotone and with authority, adding to the difficulty of sitting through a Puritan sermon. Puritan beliefs were the center of their lives. Even in Puritans writing, their beliefs were the main topic. Two excellent examples of Puritan beliefs are found in the writings “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards and “Huswifery” by Edward Taylor. Contrasting figurative languages impact how one perceives the tone of a speaker in writing. “Huswifery” shows a God that is choosy, yet overall, a loving and caring God. The figurative language of the poem is used to compare speaker to a spinning wheel or more specifically the speaker’s relationship with god. In the first stanza the speaker is a spinning wheel, he is God’s tool; moreover a tool of creation. In this part of the poem raw material becomes refined by the spinning wheel, which is a humble process capable of diverse products, which in the poem is yarn or thread. The thread is significant because it

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