Jonathan Edwards Quotes on God, Love, Heaven and True Religion
Jonathan Edwards is often remembered for one sermon about sinners and a spider. But the man who preached it also wrote some of the warmest lines in Christian literature about the beauty of God, the sweetness of holiness and heaven as a world of love. He was a pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the 1700s, and a leader in the revivals of his day. For his life story, see who was Jonathan Edwards.
Edwards quotes are easy to find online and hard to trust. Many are paraphrased, and some come from other writers. The quotations below are copied exactly from the books in TheWay Library, with the book and section where each one appears. A few of these books were restored from old scans, so we chose lines whose wording is clean. For a guide to every book, see Jonathan Edwards books.
From his Resolutions
As a young man of about nineteen, Edwards wrote a list of resolutions and read them over each week. They're printed in the life of Edwards that opens our edition of Religious Affections.
Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Extracts from His Private Writings
Resolved, To live with all my might, while I do live.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Extracts from His Private Writings
Resolved, Never to do any thing, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Extracts from His Private Writings
Resolved, Never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Extracts from His Private Writings
On seeing the glory of God
Edwards wrote an account of his own conversion. He describes how a verse in 1 Timothy first gave him a new sense of God, and how the whole world looked different afterward.
I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapt up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, An Account of His Conversion
The appearance of every thing was altered, there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, An Account of His Conversion
God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, An Account of His Conversion
He explained that experience in his sermon A Divine and Supernatural Light. These are among his best-known lines:
Thus there is a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light
The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but the heart is concerned in the latter.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light
On our dependence on God
His first published sermon, God Glorified in Man's Dependence, says that God is not only the giver of every good thing to the redeemed but is Himself their good.
The redeemed have all their good in God. We not only have it of him, and through him, but it consists in him; he is all our good.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, God Glorified in Man's Dependence
God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, God Glorified in Man's Dependence
The saints are beautiful and blessed by a communication of God's holiness and joy, as the moon and planets are bright by the sun's light.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, God Glorified in Man's Dependence
So much the more men exalt themselves, so much the less will they surely be disposed to exalt God.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, God Glorified in Man's Dependence
On true religion
After the revivals, Edwards wrote Religious Affections to help people tell real faith from imitation. His answer was that true religion moves the heart, but the heart must be lit by truth and shown in a changed life.
True religion, in a great part, consists in holy affections.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part I
As there is no true religion where there is nothing else than affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part I
If we be not in good earnest in religion, and our wills and inclinations be not strongly exercised, we are nothing.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part I
Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from the information of the understanding, some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part III, sign IV
Knowledge is the key that first opens the hard heart, and enlarges the affections, and so opens the way for men into the kingdom of heaven.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part III, sign IV
But a false hatred and zeal against sin, is against some particular sin only.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part III, sign X
It is manifest, that christian practice, or a holy life, is a great and distinguishing sign of true and saving grace. But I may go farther, and assert, that it is the chief of all the signs of grace.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Part III, sign XII
On Christian love
Charity and Its Fruits is a series of lectures on 1 Corinthians 13. Edwards taught that love is not one virtue among many but the sum of them all.
That all the virtue that is saving, and that distinguishes TRUE Christians from others, is summed up IN Christian love.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture I
Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture I
If persons have the true light of heaven let into their souls, it is not a light without heat.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture I
It will check and restrain everything like a bitter spirit; for love has no bitterness in it, but is a gentle and sweet disposition and affection of the soul.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture I
Consider that as a principle of love is the main principle in the heart of a real Christian, so the labour of love is the main business of the Christian life.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture I
On heaven
Heaven is a world of charity or love.
Charity and Its Fruits, Lecture XVI
And there is a sufficiency in the fountain of heaven's happiness to supply and fill and satisfy all: and there is in all respects enough for the happiness of all.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, The Many Mansions
It was sweet to me to think of meeting dear Christians in heaven, where we should never part more.
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, An Account of His Conversion
On the danger of the unconverted
Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God at Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741. It was a sermon of warning, meant to drive his hearers to Christ while there was time.
There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
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 … and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
In another sermon, on Ruth's choice to follow Naomi's God, he pleaded with his hearers to choose as she did:
Count the cost of a thorough, violent, and perpetual pursuit of salvation, and forsake all, as Ruth forsook her own country and all her pleasant enjoyments in it.
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, Ruth's Resolution
'Tis a hard thing to find the right way to Heaven.
Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards, Sermons
On revival and God's work in history
Edwards described the 1734 and 1735 awakening in Northampton in A Faithful Narrative:
It never was so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then.
Edwards on Revivals, A Faithful Narrative, Introductory Statement
This work that has lately been carried on in the land, is the work of God, and not the work of man.
Edwards on Revivals, Thoughts on the Revival, Part III
And in his sermons on the whole history of redemption, he traced God's faithfulness to His church from the fall to the end of the world:
God has always, ever since the first erecting of the church of the redeemed after the fall, had such a church in the world.
A History of the Work of Redemption, General Introduction
God's righteousness, or covenant mercy, is the root of which his salvation is the fruit.
A History of the Work of Redemption, General Introduction
Finally, one line from his great book on the will, which sums up its starting point:
And therefore it must be true, in some sense, that the Will always is as the greatest apparent good is.
Freedom of the Will, Part I, Section II
Where to start reading Edwards
The easiest door into Edwards is his sermons. Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards gives you seven of them, including Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God read whole, alongside the gentler sermons on spiritual light and heaven. After that, read Charity and Its Fruits, then Religious Affections. All his books are on the Jonathan Edwards author page, and our reading guide explains each one.