The introduction of the Declaration of Independence:
             When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
             The passage from "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" selected to compare and contrast with the introduction of the Declaration of Independence:
             The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this. "There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment. The truth of this observation may appear by the following considerations.
             When the two passages are compared, many similarities can be discovered. Each passage is an introduction into a greater piece that is trying to persuade the reader into thinking something different than they had before. Each passage uses parallel structure to force the reader to accept argument on top of argument so quickly that the reader cannot disprove the arguments and must be forced to accept them without even thinking about it. "By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment" is a good example of parallel st...