480 atom AND RECOVERY, &C. Think of the vast numbers that are swallowed up in the mighty waters by the rage of stormy winds and seas, which are roused to destroy mortals, and pronounce aloud the wrath of heaven. Review a little what immense multitudes have been swept away by the pestilence, or have had their nature and life worn out by the long and tedious agonies of famine ? Would famine and pestilence, with all the dismal train of lingering hor- rors which attend them, have been ever made for innocent crea- tures, to have thus swept away whole nations of them, of every ageand sex, men, women, and children, without distinction ? Think yet again, what numbers of mankind have been crushed into misery and death, in their own dwellings, and buried there by earthquakes, or have had all their bones bruised, their limbs disjointed and broken, and their flesh painfully bat- tered by the fall of houses, and been buried alive in the ruins of whole towns and villages, while their neighbours have been burned or drowned in multitudes, by the dismal eruptions of fire and water, or destroyed terribly by deluges of liquid fire, break- ing out of the earth ? Survey these scenes of horror, and then say, would a God of goodness and justice treat innocent crea- tures at this rate, or expose them to these formidable mischiefs ? Carry your thoughts overthe seas to the countryof canni- bals and other savages, whereby the custom of nations, thou- sands of their conquered enemies, or prisoners of war, are some- times cruelly put to death, to pave the road to their own palace with their skulls, or they are offered in sacrifice to their idols ; sometimes they are roasted in slow fires, as I before hinted, and tortured and eaten by their barbarous conquerors : Add to this all the former miseries, and then say, whether this world does not look like a province half forsaken of its gracious governor, or almost given up to mischief and misery. Some perhaps will say here, it is easy toaccount for a mul- titude of these miseries, without any universal degeneracy or corruption of human nature. It is but a small part of mankind who are overwhelmedby earthquakes, who are drowned in the seas, who are destroyedby war or famine, who are racked with long and terrible distempers, who are eaten by savages, or put to deathby the hands of violence and cruelty ; and perhaps those who suffer peculiar itfictions are punished for their own personal iniquities: Answer. Take a just survey of all the persons who have fallen under these miseries, and there isnot the least reason to conclude they have all been sinners above others. Do not the calamities of' war, and famine, and pestilence, and earthquakes, and inundations, &c. spread promiscuously without distinction through a whole country at once, and involve the best and worst of men in the same misery and ruin ? And is there any ground to imagine, that those spreading devastationsmake any distine-
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