Early Puritans were a god-fearing people, a new community in a new world where the goal of religious goodness was often at odds with a high level of sin and ungodliness in the New World. Both Michael Wigglesworth and Jonathon Edwards witnessed the pervasive sin in Puritan society. Such observation led each to write treatises that would inspire devotion to religious goodness and instill fear in sinners that to do otherwise would result in eternal damnation. WigglesworthÆs effort led to a poem entitled The Day of Doom, in which he depicts the Day of Judgment and its hellish images for sinners. Edwards wrote a sermon that revealed the fiery wrath of God entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Despite differences in imagery, style, and language, both Doom and Sinners have the same lesson in mind for their audience: only the righteous will escape the fiery wrath of God.
In WigglesworthÆs The Day of Doom, the poet conjures up graphic and fiery images of the coming of the Judgment Day. After creating the serene setting of Earth before God arrives to settle the score with sinners, Wigglesworth uses his verse to depict sinners immersed in enjoying the wages of sin without being aware that their day of doom approaches: ôWallowing in all kind of sin, / vile wretches lay secure: / The best of men had scarcely then / their lamps kept in good ureö (294). In the midst of this ignorant and sinful bliss comes Christ the Judge. Akin to the hell and brimstone demeanor of Puritan Christianity, the poem portrays Christ as intolerant of sinners, taking no excuses as justification for transgressing the word of God. As Wigglesworth writes of ChristÆs view of excuses from sinners, ôYou had a season, what was your reason / such precious hours to waste? / What could you find, what could you mind / that was of greater haste?ö (301).
Wigglesworth poem does offer salvation for the righteous but for sinners it offer
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