Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 6

Some of the spiritual experiences Edwards reported were painful, although they were ultimately helpful in his spiritual growth and development. “”I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together; so that I have often been forced to shut myself up (retire to some private place). I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness, and the badness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared to me that … I should appear the very worst of all mankind – of all that have been, since the beginning of the world to this time, and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell … I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite.” (pg. 101)