Notwithstanding the unbounded praises bestowed upon Benjamin Franklin for the great discovery of the lightning conductor, the actual adaptation of it spread with extreme slowness. It was in the country of its origin that it was brought into public use, all the countries of Europe lagging far behind. But even in the Northern States of America, though inhabited by a highly intelligent race, there were great difficulties to overcome. The ministers of religion at first seemed to think that the iron rods were not altogether free from the suspicion of infidelity. Franklin himself had the reputation of being a free-thinker, and indeed never hid from others the fact of his being accustomed to examine all matters by the light of his own reason, and to believe nothing that he could not understand. Perhaps on the same ground many of the New England ministers did not believe in lightning conductors. They could not understand them. A heavy shock of earthquake was felt throughout Massachusetts in the summer of 1755, whereupon a Boston clergyman instantly came forward, denouncing in eloquent strains the erection of a number of lightning conductors which had taken place. The high iron rods, he gravely maintained, had been the cause of the earthquake, by drawing vast masses of electricity from the atmosphere into the ground. A distinguished friend of Franklin, Professor Winthrop, of Harvard College, thought it necessary to come forward and defend lightning conductors against the accusation of accumulating electricity, but without convincing the plaintiff. A different charge, still more serious in the eyes of pious people, had been made against lightning conductors some years before. Another Boston clergyman, coming forward in 1770, opposed the use of Franklin’s iron rods on the ground that, as the lightning was one of the acknowledged means of punishing the sins of mankind, and of warning them from the commission of acts of wickedness, it was impious ‘to prevent the execution of the wrath of heaven.’ To this gentleman also Professor Winthrop deemed it requisite to reply. Franklin himself remained silent, wrapping himself in the mantle of the sage. But he allowed his friend Ebenezer Kinnersley, of Philadelphia, who went travelling, by his wish and partly at his cost, through the principal towns and villages of the New England States, to explain to the people the uses and advantages of lightning conductors, to preface all his lectures by the announcement that the erection of iron rods to protect houses from the effects of thunderstorms was not an act ‘chargeable with presumption, nor inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or revealed religion.’