This _unusual_ kind of death too, strikes us with horror; to be buried alive. The earth, the common mother of us all, and the common grave; to eat up her offspring alive; crouds all the images of amazement together, that can enter into the heart of man. The greater the terror accompanying earthquakes, the greater a blessing is our deliverance from the danger of it! What can equal God's power and judgment but his mercy? Consider the wonderful consequence; that the whole city of _London_ should so sensibly be shaken, and yet no one inhabited house to fall; nor one person kill'd. Amazing instance of power, and goodness, in our preservation! And this not only once, but the second time also; tho' evidently stronger was the concussion. So strong that almost every person was throughly persuaded, that some part, at least, of their houses, was falling down. Can we help admiring, that judgment should be so temper'd 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 nature, like the roaring waves of the ocean, that flow in, and overwhelm every thing, where a breach is made. They can observe no distinction between the lands of a righteous man, and of a sinner: they cannot stop at the breach, and gather themselves on an heap, and not enter in at all, as the waters of _Jordan_ did. But in the case before us, the hand of the Lord, that stayed the flowing of the waters, that quelled the raging of the sea, and its proud waves; sets bounds to the trembling of the earth. Hither shall its vibrations go, and no further. When alas, if it went but one inch further (in comparison) a total ruin must unavoidably follow.