Page:The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious.djvu/57

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Earthquakes.
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help admiring, that judgment should be so tempered with mercy! Do we look only at the second causes with our unbelievers; and sport away the divine presence, as if it was an ordinary occurrence of every day? They want to see a miracle. Nought can affect them, but a direct, supernatural agency.

I answer, behold a visible, and notorious miracle; plainly obvious, and before all their senses. For can there be a greater miracle, can any thing be more directly the finger of God than this, which we ourselves saw with our eyes; that befell the whole city of London.

We know the nature of the building of London houses; which sometimes fall of themselves, without shaking. Wonderful then is it to be thought, and a miracle indeed, that every house in this vast city, should twice be agitated, and rocked to and fro; and not one fall, nor one person receive any damage.

In vain will the philosophers seek for a solution of this problem, in natural causes only. By their chymical experiments, they make some little mimic imitations of tremors and fumes, and explosions. So by gun-powder, we ape the regal voice of thunder. But where is the discretionary act of mercy, and benignity, that separates between the vengeful and kind? These second causes act according to their

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