"It is not rational to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it."

"It is not rational to suppose, if there be any such excellency in divine things, that wicked men should see it. 'Tis not rational to suppose, that those whose minds are full of spiritual pollution, and under the power of filthy lusts, should have any relish or sense of divine beauty, or excellency; or that their minds should be susceptive of that light that is in its own nature so pure and heavenly. It need not seem at all strange, that sin should so blind the mind, seeing that men's particular natural tempers and dispositions will so much blind them in secular matters; as when men's natural temper is melancholy, jealous, fearful, proud, or the like."

     Jonathan Edwards, "A divine and supernatural light" (August 1733), Doctrine III Secondly 2.   The works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Perry Miller et al., vol. 17 (Sermons and discourses, 1730-1733, ed. Mark R. Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)), p. 421.