Resolved

More resolutions from Edwards' Resolutions:

9. Resolved, to think much on all occassions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom and of hell.
17. Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.
18. Resolved, to live so at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of things of the gospel, and another world.

In our day, we do the exact opposite of what Edwards was trying to do in resolutions nine and ten. We don't like bad feelings that attend such thoughts. And they seem rather morose to us. However, this was Puritan wisdom, and wisdom indeed (Ps. 90:10, 12). At least Moses would have agreed with Edwards (or maybe Moses informed Edwards' thinking; I'm taking an OT criticism class right now, and I'm a bit muddled on the direction of these things).

A side bar: Just think about what the psychologists and psychiatrists (the modern day religious intelligentsia) could say today of someone like Edwards. He was probably pathological from his birth, certainly from his "conversion" onwards.