Selfishness In The New Land Analysis

Selfishness in the New Land
“Pride grows with the decrease of other sins and thrives on their decay. Satan is subtle. He will make us proud of our very graces. He will make us proud that we are not proud,” said by Thomas Brooke, an English lawyer. The Puritans were an extremely religious group of people; they believed God would be happy with them if they obeyed Him. This may be true, but the Puritans did not portray an strong and perfect christian group. The Puritans were a selfish group of people due to their inability to show any act of selflessness toward anyone outside their clique, their belief that they have a higher prerogative over any other group, and their tactics of getting what they want.
The Puritans may have followed the …show more content…
The puritans used sermons to scare their people into believing that God was extremely angry with them. John Edwards spoke the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and exclaimed, “So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them.” Also, puritan speakers inspired the immigrants, but they also put fear into their minds. Going back to Winthrop, he said that they must act as ideal role models and listen to the word of God in order to provide for their posterity and prosperity. Lastly, speakers would also use sermons to infer that God has no mercy on sinners. Edwards said, “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.” The puritans twisted the words of God in order to succeed for their own