The Literature of the 1727 New England Earthquake

measured in intellectual terms.³ In these publications both natur­
al philosophy and theology were employed in the task of explaining
the earthquake in a manner consistent with current naturalistic and
religious definitions of reality; these attempts at explanation--in effect,
efforts to maintain the coherence of the Puritan worldview--illumin­
ate a series of issues relevant to a broader understanding of Ameri­
can culture in the first half of the eighteenth century.

It would be naïve to search in the literature of the 1727 earth­
quake for a fully developed scientific analysis of the phenomenon;
while almost all the published sermons address themselves in varying
ways to issues of causation, such concern is uniformly subordinate
to theological interest and the practical demands of deriving appli­
cable religious lessons from the earthquake. Throughout the early
years of the eighteenth century Christian apologists maneuvered to
mesh the new science with the orthodoxies of revealed religion, con­
ventionally viewing natural philosophy as the "handmaiden" of
religion.⁴ Although Puritan interest in science was always high,
it must be recalled in the following discussion that scientific analy­
sis was always secondary to the religious.

One measure of the impact of the scientific method on minis­
ters attempting to interpret the 1727 earthquake is the concern they
all manifested for measuring its effects. Catalogs of destroyed build­
ings, reports of firsthand observations, detailed accounts of smells
and sounds associated with the quake--these all find their place in
the published sermons. Clearly such response to a natural phenom­
enon reflects concern for scientific analysis: the collection and evalu­
ation of evidence illustrate the predominant Baconian method of
gathering "instances" that would eventually lead to theories of ex­
planation.

Of greater interest, though, to the historian of science are the
similar efforts most ministers expended on the study of the causes of
the earthquake. If the collection of physical evidence of the effects
of the quake may be dismissed as a refinement of the "remarkable
providences" approach, the serious inquiry into causation has to be
seen as proof of the scientific attitude most ministers assumed toward
the event. In their study of causation, the writers occupied rather
fortunate ground: no scientifically "orthodox" theory of the causes
of earthquakes existed as either a bar to further speculation or as an
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