And that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be preceded by despair is shown by Edwards in another passage.
“Surely it cannot be unreasonable,” he says, “that before God delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe, he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the value of what God is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successively in two extremely different states—first in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justification and blessedness—and as God, in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and intelligent creatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that those who are saved should be made sensible of their Being, in those two different states. In the first place, that they should be made sensible of their state of condemnation; and afterwards, of their state of deliverance and happiness.”
Such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal interpretation of these changes. Whatever part suggestion and