Earthquakes explained and practically improved

4 Apprehensions of sudden, unavoidable Death, and this when they are in health and strong, aggravates their case, and augments their fears. What! am I well, and yet must die? strong in health, and yet now must die? hath Death forgot its old way of sending Harbingers before it, before it came it self? did it use to send its Sergeants to arrest, before it cast Men into the Prison of the Grave, and must I be ⟨p. 40⟩haled away without Summons? Some have been weaned from the love of Life, and made weary of it by long and languishing Sickness, by wracking & tormenting Pains, and must I in my Youth, or in middle Age, under no pain, with my strength firm, yield to Death? All this doth fill with greater fear.

4 Apprehensions of sudden, unavoidable Death, and this when they are in health and strong, aggravates their case, and augments their fears. What! am I well, and yet must die? strong in health, and yet now must die? hath Death forgot its old way of sending Harbingers before it, before it came it self? did it use to send its Serjeants to arrest, before it cast Men into the Prison of the Grave, and must I be ⟨p. 40⟩haled away without Summons? Some have been weaned from the love of Life, and made weary of it by long and languishing Sickness, by wracking & tormenting Pains, and must I in my Youth, or in middle Age, under no pain, with my strength firm, yield to Death? All this doth fill with greater fear.

5 This unusual way of d•ing makes it the more terrible. Others, in other cases, first die, and then are buried, first expire, and then are carried to their Graves; but in an Earthquake must I be buried alive? first buried and then die? others are carried from their house, when dead, unto the grave, and must mine own house be my grave, and that while I do live? Behold! the Earth quakes under me, my House trembles over me. Oh! what if my trembling House should fall, and I in it? what if the Earth should sink under me? what if this quaking Earth should open its mouth, and eat me up alive? what if it should cleave asunder (as in its shaking it hath sometimes done? and swallow me up as it hath done thousands of others? when others die another way, doth this loving Mother lay their dead Bodies in her Bosom, must I die this way, and go down alive into her bowels? did I live in my Mothers womb before I was born, and must I live (awhile) in this common Mothers bowels, after I am therein buried? This being not the common death of all Men, makes it more terrible to those that apprehend in an Earthquake they must not die as others do. All laid together, shows that Earthquakes caue great consternation of mind, perplexing, fretting fears, which is the first effect thereof.