N02454:102
Boanerges. A short essay to preserve and strengthen the good impressions produced by earthquakes…
Boanerges. A short essay to preserve and strengthen the good impressions produced by earthquakes on the minds of people that have been awakened with them. : With some views of what is to be further and quickly looked for. : Addressed unto the whole people of New-England, who have been terrified with the late earthquakes; and more especially the towns that have had a more singular share in the terrors of them. : [Three lines from I Chronicles]Boanerges. A short essay to preserve and strengthen the good impressions produced by earthquakes on the minds of people that have been awakened with them. : With some views of what is to be further and quickly look'd for. : Address'd unto the whole people of New-England, who have been terrified with the late earthquakes; and more especially the towns that have had a more singular share in the terrors of them. : [Three lines from I Chronicles]
Boston: printed for S. Kneeland, 1727
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
III. The Third OBSERVABLE.
There was This Year, a very strange occurrence in Ireland; which drew as in Miniature a most lively Emblem, of what it is that EARTHQUAKES come for; and of the Condition and Confusion which falls upon Forsaken Sinners, when held in the Cords of their Sins, and fiez'd by the Irresistible Vengeance of Heaven. The Story is worth telling; and by the ordering of GOD it is come to pass, that it is told among the Nations; Yea, and in America too this lively Picture is now exhibited. Here it is; look upon it!
On the Fourteenth of the last August, (1727.) as one John Byrn, a Wretch of a very Dissolute and Abandoned Life, stood at the Gallows in Kilkenny, with a Rope about his Neck, in order to be executed for the Murder of one Mr. Taylor, ⟨image ?⟩and was relating the Murder with an amazing Indolence and Insolence, a Noise like Thunder was heard under the Gallows, and the Earth fell a Trembling, with the terrible Shocks of an Earthquake, for many Yards round about the Place, but not extending any further. It was looked on as an amazing Expression of the Divine Displeasure, and the Wrath of GOD revealed from Heaven, against the Crimes of so horrible and obdurate a Criminal. The astonished Sheriff, and his Guards, and the Spectators, which were very numerous, all ran away with the utmost Consternation a Expedition; and with such Distraction, that Malefactor being left alone, had a strange portunity, to have made his Escape, if he had tempted it. But he was himself so terrified a confounded, as to be found presently Stupefied when the Sheriff returned, and finished the Execution.