A Lecture on Earthquakes
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Adams#: Adams 170.9 (1) Title: A lecture on earthquakes : read in the chapel of Harvard-College in Cambridge, N.E., November 26th, 1755. On occasion of the great earthquake which shook New England the week before
Author: Winthrop, John
Page: front cover [1]
The Gift of Mr. Joseph [?] to his friend and servant John Adams
Page: title page verso [4]
1761. March 12, about half after two in the morning, we had an earthquake resembling, though not quite equalling, that which gave occasion to this discourse in violence or duration.
Page: 16
March 12th 1761. Another earthquake happened which may perhaps enable us to determine whereabouts these earthquakes originate and what course they take. For as all Canada is now in English hands, we may have accounts from Montreal, Quebec, Oswego and the several places upon the River St. Lawrence, at what time this earthquake happened, its direction, and degree of violence.
Page: 27
Earthquakes of standing advantage to globe. – [inferred] from analogy.
Page: 37
This exclamation was very popular, for the audience in general like the rest of the province, consider thunder and lightning as well as earthquakes, only as judgments, punishments, warnings etc. and have no conception of any uses they can sense in nature. I have heard some persons of the highest rank among us, say that they really thought the erection of iron points was an impious attempt to rob the Almighty of his thunder, to wrest the bolt of vengeance out of his hand. And others, that thunder was designed as an execution upon criminals, that no mortal can stay. That the attempt was foolish as well as impious. And no instances, even those of steeples struck, where iron bars have by accident conveyed the electricity as far as they reached without damage, which one would think would force conviction, have no weight at all.
Page: inside back cover
This invention of iron points to prevent the danger of thunder has met with all that opposition from the superstitions, affectation of piety, and jealousy of new inventions that inoculation to prevent the danger of the small pox and all other useful discoveries have met with in all ages of the world.
I am not able to satisfy myself whether the very general, if not universal, apprehension that thunder, earthquakes, pestilence, famine etc. are designed merely as punishments of sins and warnings to forsake is natural to mankind, or whether it was artfully propagated, or whether it was derived from Revelation.
An imagination that those things are of no use in nature but to punish and alarm and arouse sinners could not be derived from real Revelation, because it is far from being true, though few persons can be persuaded to think so.