VI. Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humiliation.
Evangelical humiliation is a sense that a Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, with an answerable frame of heart.
There is a distinction to be made between a legal and evangelical humiliation. The former is what men may be the subjects of, while they are yet in a state of nature, and have no gracious affections; the latter is peculiar to true saints. The former is from the common influence of the Spirit of God, assisting natural principles, and especially natural conscience; the latter is from the special influences of the Spirit of God, implanting and exercising supernatural and divine principles: the former is from the mind’s being assisted to a greater sense of the things of religion as to their natural properties and qualities, and particularly of the natural perfections of God, such as His greatness, and terrible majesty, which were manifested to the congregation of Israel in giving the law at mount Sinai; the latter is from a sense of the transcendent beauty of divine things in their moral qualities. In the former, a sense of the awful greatness and natural perfections of God, and of the strictness of His law, convinces men that they are exceeding sinful and guilty and exposed to the wrath of God, as it will convince wicked men and devils at the day of judgment; but they do not see their own odiousness on account of sin; they do not see the hateful nature of sin; a sense of this is given in evangelical humiliation by a discovery of the beauty of God’s holiness and moral perfection. In a legal humiliation, men are made sensible that they are little and nothing before the great and terrible God, and that they are undone, and wholly insuffi cient to help themselves; as wicked men will be at the day of judgment: but they have not an answerable frame of heart, consisting in a disposition to abase themselves, and exalt God alone.
This disposition is given only in evangelical humiliation, by overcoming the heart and changing its inclination, by a discovery of God’s holy beauty. In a legal humiliation, the conscience is convinced, as the consciences of all will be most perfectly at the day of judgment; but because there is no spiritual understand-ing, the will is not bowed nor the inclination altered: this is done only in evangelical humiliation. In legal humiliation, men are brought to despair of helping themselves; in evangelical, they are brought voluntarily to deny and renounce themselves; in the former, they are subdued and forced to the ground; in the latter, they are brought sweetly to yield, and freely and with delight to prostrate themselves at the feet of God.
Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, iii.vi
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