Synonyms: anarchic, demagogic, exciting, explosive, fiery, incendiary, incitive, inflaming, instigative, insurgent, intemperate, provocative, rabble-rousing, rabid, rebellious, revolutionary, rioutous, seditionay, seditious

 

Example:

 

 

     "The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life, are in the hands of an angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, Peace and safety: now they see, that those things on which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows."

 

~ Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

 

Analysis:

   

   The ethos and word choice of Edward's sermon accounts for the inflammatory tone.  Phrases such as "God's wrath" and "made drunk with your blood"  stir emotional responses such as fear and unworthiness. Relying on such a strong emotional appeal and the negative connotations associated with loaded words and phrases such as "swallowed up in everlasting destruction"  and "justice", Edward's successfully attributes an inflammed tone to his sermon. He wants to arouse his audience in order to force them to become more pious out of fear of God's wrath.  The details and constant reference to "you" makes one feel as if God's anger is directed at them personally. The imagery as in "thin air and empty shadows" combined with loaded words and powerful ethos qualify this sermon as one of the most inflammed speeches of all time.