Edwards on Preaching to the People's Needs

PART III. Wherein the zealous Promoters of this Work have been injuriously blamed.: "Though, as I said before, clearness of distinction and illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method, in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected; yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light, and have no heat. How much has there been of this sort of knowledge, in the Christian world, in this age! Was there ever an age, wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet, was there ever an age, wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching, which has the greatest tendency to do this."

Today we find ourselvs in an opposite situation: men have heat and no light. I wonder, then, if the "preaching which has the greatest tendancy" to recover the lost light is all pathetic and little reasoning, argumentation, proof, etc. I doubt it. I think the heat must be retained, with a renewed focus on light.

sin makes us both blind and cold to the beauty and glory of Christ Jesus. The Spirit opens eyes for light and opens hearts for heat; that we might see the Lord for who He is as revealed in Scripture (lest we worship an image: our imagination), and that we might be enflamed with love toward him. Even understanding this is meaningless if we "have no love for the Lord." We can have right knowledge and wrong affections. We can also have wrong knowledge and high passions. Those passions are unholy since they are evoked by an image made by hands; made by my mind-an imagination. Thier worth is measured by their object. They are weighed and found wanting.