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

 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 material