Christopher Yang

Outline

I. Introduction

A. Comp risk-

B. Anecdote

C. Even though Franklin and Edwards both wrote these selections during the Age of Reason, their styles, tones, and positions towards their audience differ greatly.

II. Body Paragraph One

  1. Style
  2. Edwards uses hyperbole, personal invective, repetition, and imagery
  3. “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of 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. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing you have ever done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.”
  4. Edwards uses imagery to describe your state in the eye of God, and repetition to stress that only God, nothing you can do within your own power, can save you from this fate.
  5. Style – different backgrounds of Franklin and Edwards into style transition. Franklin writes using the first person, with very little figurative language, stating events and experiences “as matter of fact” with definite order.
  6. “My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should have gone through thirteen and as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that view as they stand above.”
  7. Relate back to my thesis

III. Body Paragraph Two

  1. Tone
  2. Edwards uses harsh tone, angry condescending tone to create fear and guilt to fulfill his purpose.
  3. “You have reason to wonder that you are not already in Hell. It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and known, that never deserved Hell more than you, and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you. Their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation.”
  4. Edwards says to the audience that they and those they know are bound for hell already.
  5. Transition into Franklin – Colloquial, practical, idealistic
  6. “It was about this time I conceived that bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.”
  7. Relate back to my thesis.

IV. Body Paragraph Three

  1. Position/relation
  2. Edwards stresses emotion, equality in religion, spiritual, not intellectual
  3. “But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!”
  4. Salvation is an emotional change that can be experience by anyone
  5. Franklin stresses morals, intellect, rational, and reason
  6. “I should have gone through the thirteen; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should have gone through thirteen and as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate.”
  7. Relate back to my thesis.