and

anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you*."

That by this heavenly temper, and the practice of every other christian virtue, you may finally obtain, through faith in your Redeemer, the gift of everlasting life, is the fervent prayer of

A

LETTER

TO THE

INHABITANTS OF MANCHESTER, MACCLESFIELD,

AND THE ADJACENT PARTS,

ON OCCASION OF

THE LATE EARTHQUAKE

IN THOSE PLACES.

THE TENTH EDITION.

FIRST PRINTED IN THE YEAR 1777.

A

LETTER

TO THE

INHABITANTS OF MANCHESTER,

&c.

My Friends and Brethren,

THE great dangers to which you have been so lately exposed, and which you have so providentially escaped, are of too important a nature, for me, who stand to you in the near relation of diocesan, to pass over in total silence. Notwithstanding the recent date of that relation, I could not resist so powerful a call upon me to discharge my own duty and remind you of yours. The occasion, I hope, will justify me. It is in my apprehension a very serious one. A few weeks since, I am persuaded, you yourselves thought so, whatever may be your opinion now. The first impressions which the earthquake made upon

you, were, it seems, sufficiently strong; but by this time, perhaps, they may (in some of you at least) be entirely effaced, and you may be going on in the very same unremitted round of business or of pleasure, as if nothing in the world extraordinary had ever happened to you. If this be the case, it is but the more necessary that I should bring back this awakening incident to your thoughts again, and endeavour to imprint a due sense of it upon your minds. The admonitions you have had are not, believe me, to be treated as common, trivial things. When the Almighty speaks in such tremendous language, he must not speak in vain.

There may indeed possibly be some who will take pains to persuade you that the Deity has no concern in events of this sort; that they are the result of chance, or the effects of natural causes, which have no dependence upon him; that the moment he made the world he gave up all care about it, and though the earth be shaken to its very centre, he either sees it not, or sees it with perfect indifference and unconcern. I am not in a humour to waste the time that is destined to better and higher purposes in combating such extravagancies