Patrick Henry's "Speech in the Virginia Convention" and Jonathan Edwards's sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," are two literary works that effective persuade the reader into believing that they have been misguided into a life of false convictions. Henry's speech relays a feeling of urgency that the colonists need to break the shackles that Great Britain has controlled them under so tightly. He encourages colonists to rise up against in the face of adversity and fight for the basic freedoms of liberty and independence that, so long, has been denied to them. In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," the reader can feel the sheer hatred that God has for those that do not repent their sin and refuse to accept the light of Jesus Christ. Each of these works of literature are effective in the element of persuasion because they express a need for fast change of the ways in which each society succumbs to its own definition of "evil."
             Each of these works of nonfiction literature convey a distinct sense of urgency and fear that effectively persuade the reader to go with the author's point of view. For example, in Edwards's sermon, he instills the reader with fear when he preaches, "O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of fire and wrath." It is clear that Edwards can very convincingly coerce the reader to think about his misdeeds and repent for the sake of his own well being and be saved from the eternal wrath of hell. A similar persuasive technique can be observed in Henry's speech to the Senate. He uses persuasion to convince the peoples that they must fight against the British in the form of rhetorical questions, such as, "Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years...What terms shall we find which have not been exhausted? Let us not, I ...