One of Jonathan Edwards' most effective sermons was "The Future Punishment of the Wicked." As this excerpt from the sermon suggests, "His vivid descriptions of hell could terrify his listeners." But they were equally terrified by Edwards' description of their own utter inability to stand against God's wrath. Indeed it was this acute awareness of their helplessness that Edwards hoped would awaken "sinners" to their complete dependence on God's grace for their salvation.

It is common with men, when they meet with calamities in this world, in the first place to endeavor to shun them. But if they find they cannot shun them, then after they are come, they endeavor to deliver themselves from them as soon as they can; or at least to order things so as to deliver themselves in some degree. But if they find that they can by no means deliver themselves, and see that the case is so that they must bear them, then they set themselves to bear them: they fortify their spirits, and take up a resolution, that they will support themselves under them as well as they can. They clothe themselves with all the resolution and courage they are masters of, to keep their spirits from sinking under their calamities.

But it will be utterly in vain for impenitent sinners to think to do thus with respect to the torments of hell. They will not be able to endure them, or at all to support themselves under them; the torment will be immensely beyond their strength. What will it signify for a worm, which is about to be pressed under the weight of some great rock, to be let fall with its whole weight upon it, to collect its strength, to set itself to bear up under the weight of the rock, and to preserve itself from being crushed by it? Much more in vain will it be for a poor damned soul to endeavor to support itself under the weight of the wrath of Almighty God. What is the strength of man, who is but a worm, to support himself against the power of Jehovah, and against the fierceness of his wrath...

When sinners hear of hell torments, they sometimes think with themselves: Well, if it shall come to that, that I must go to hell, I will bear it as well as I can; as if by clothing themselves with resolution and firmness of mind they would be able to support themselves in some measure; when, alas! they will have no resolution, no courage at all. However they shall have prepared themselves, and collected their strength, yet as soon as they shall begin to feel that wrath, their hearts will melt and be as water. However before they may seem to harden their hearts, in order to prepare themselves to bear, yet the first moment they fell it, their hearts will become like wax before the furnace. Their courage and resolution will be all gone in an instant; it will vanish away like a shadow in the twinkling of an eye. The stoutest and most sturdy will have no more courage than the feeblest infant; let a man be an infant, or a giant, it will be all one. They will not be able to keep alive any courage, any strength, any comfort, any hope at all.