Wesley Corpus

The next morning we went to see the effects of the late earthquake: Such it undoubtedly was. On Monday, 27, at four in the morning, a rumbling noise was heard, accompanied with sudden gusts of wind, and wavings of the ground. Presently the earthquake followed, which only shook the farmer's house, and removed it entire about a yard; but carried the barn about fifteen yards, and then swallowed it up in a vast chasm; tore the ground into numberless chasms, large and small; in the large, threw up mounts, fifteen or twenty feet high; carried an hedge, with two oaks, above forty feet, and left them in their natural position. It then moved under the bed of the river; which, making more resistance, received a ruder shock, being shattered in pieces, and heaved up about thirty feet from its foundations. By throwing this, and many oaks, into its channel, the Severn was quite stopped up, and constrained to flow backward, till, with incredible fury, it wrought itself a 502 REv. J. west EY’s [July, 1773. new channel. Such a scene of desolation I never saw. Will none tremble when God thus terribly shakes the earth? In the evening I preached under a spreading oak, in Madeley-Wood; Sunday, 11, morning and afternoon, in the church. In the evening I preached to the largest congre gation of all, near the market-house, at Broseley. I came back just by the famous well; but it burns no more. It ceased from the time a coal-pit was sunk near it, which drew off the sulphurous vapour.*. Mon. 12.--I preached at Wolverhampton and Birmingham. In my journey from Liverpool, I read Dr. Byrom's Poems. He has all the wit and humour of Dr. Swift, together with much more learning, a deep and strong understanding, and, above all, a serious vein of piety. A few things in him I particularly remarked: 1. The first is concerning the patron of England; and I think there can be no reasonable doubt of the truth of his conjecture, that Georgius is a mistake for Gregorius; that the real patron of England is St. Gregory; (who sent Austin, the Monk, to convert England;) and that St. George (whom no one knows) came in by a mere blunder: 2. His criticisms on Homer and Horace seem to be well grounded.