Wesley, at all times keenly alive to the supernatural, took the deepest interest in this phenomenon. At Osmotherley, he met with eye and ear witnesses of this strange occurrence. He went with one of them, Edward Abbot, a weaver, to the spot, and “walked, crept and climbed, round and over great part of the ruins.” He wrote a description of what he saw, which was published in the _London Magazine_, the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, the _Public Advertiser_, and other periodicals. He endeavoured to account for the phenomenon, and came to the conclusion, that it was not produced by any “merely natural cause,—fire, water, or air, but by God Himself,” who arose to shake terribly the earth; and who purposely chose such a place, where there was so great a concourse of nobility and gentry every year.[238] This excited the ire of an anonymous contributor to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, who declared that he had “caused an inquiry to be made into the fact, at no small trouble and expense; and found the whole to be a falsehood, without the least degree of truth for its foundation.” A more audacious lie than this, it is difficult to imagine; and yet it was published. A few months later, Wesley wrote as follows to the editor of that periodical. “BRISTOL, _March 8, 1756_. “MR. URBAN,—I have met with many persons in my life, who did not abound with modesty; but I never yet met with one who had less of it than your anonymous correspondent. The whole account of Whiston Cliff, inserted in one of your magazines, I aver to be punctually true, having been an eye witness of every particular of it. And if F. D. will set his name, and aver the contrary, I will make him ashamed, unless shame and he have shook hands, and parted. “Yours, etc., “JOHN WESLEY.” The editor adds, that, if his anonymous correspondent does not make good his assertion, he is treated in Wesley’s letter with less severity than he deserves. This evoked a communication from a man who afterwards rose to fame in the literary world. John Langhorne, who, besides numerous other works, became the well known translator of Plutarch’s Lives, was now in his twentieth year, and a private tutor in the neighbourhood of Thirsk. Having read the impudent mendacity of F. D., he wrote to _Mr. Urban_, stating that he himself had visited the scene of this strange upheaving, and fully confirmed Wesley’s statement. Thus terminated this earthquake episode in Wesley’s history. From Whiston Cliff, Wesley went to Thirsk, and then to York, the society at the latter place being, number for number, the richest he had in England. “I hope,” says he, “that York will not prove, as Cork has done, the Capua of our preachers.” He reached London on the 16th of June, and wrote:—