“Although we cannot all ‘sing the song of the Lamb,’ yet, glory be to God! we all consider the patience of our offended Creator, who, upon these ruins, invites us to repent and live. The earth, in the days of Moses, opened her mouth, and dreadfully swallowed up two families. The earth yesterday opened her mouth, probably far wider, and yet the only two families that lived here were suffered to make their escape. Allelujah! Praise the Lord! Multitudes of fishes have perished on dry ground, and myriads of land insects in the waters; and yet we, sinful insects before God, have neither been drowned in yesterday’s flood, nor buried in these chasms: Allelujah! God’s tremendous axe has been lifted up; some of yonder green trees have been struck; and we, who are dry trees, we, cumberers of the ground, are graciously spared; Allelujah! The house of Dathan and Abiram, with all that appertained unto them, descended into the pit of destruction; and we, who are loaded with mountains of sins, stand yet upon firm ground, with all our friends. Allelujah! God, who might have commanded the earth to swallow up a thronged play-house, the royal exchange, a crowded cathedral, the parliament house, or the king’s palace, has graciously commanded an empty barn to sink, and give us the alarm. Allelujah! He might have ordered such a tract of land as this, to heave, move, and open in the centre of our populous cities; but mercy has inclined Him to fix upon this solitary place. Allelujah! He might have suffered the road and the river to be overthrown, when cursing drivers passed with their horses, and blaspheming watermen with their barges; but His compassion made Him strike the warning blow with all possible tenderness. ‘O that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He does for the children of men!’”
These two extracts from the sermon preached on this remarkable occasion must suffice; but one of Fletcher’s foot-notes may be added:—
“A woman, thirty-five years of age, passing before a looking-glass the day after she heard this sermon, was surprised to see an unusual paleness upon her face. She called her husband, told him she was a dying woman, and actually died in a quarter of an hour. She heard me on the Friday, and I buried her the Monday following. Another middle-aged person, who was also among my hearers, was buried the next day in the next parish. How soon may we be called to give an account of what we speak or hear, write or read!”
The anti-evangelical Monthly Review of November, 1773, in noticing Fletcher’s publication, remarked:—
“Mr. Fletcher, who is a man of learning and considerable abilities, has given us a curious account of this phenomenon, which has been so frequently mentioned in our newspapers. He has minutely, but in very flowery language, described the awful appearances left by this extraordinary convulsion of the earth; and he fairly states the different opinions which were formed in regard to the cause of so wonderful an event. Mr. Fletcher tells us that he piously chose to take advantage of the seriousness stamped, by this alarming occurrence, on the minds of the country people, in order to press upon them a proper sense of the first or moral cause of so tremendous a dispensation; and this he has done in a manner as rational as could be well expected from the peculiarity of the occasion and the known enthusiastic spirit of the preacher.”
[280]. Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” p. 66.
[281]. Whitehead’s “Life of Wesley,” vol. ii., p. 356.
[282]. Wesley’s “Life of Fletcher,” p. 68.
[283]. Miss Bradburn’s MSS., and MS. by Mr. Harrison, of Chester.