The seventeenth century was God-fearing in the most literal sense. Natural disasters were divine messages, warnings to sinful mankind to change its ways lest an angry and impatient God unleash still further rounds of punishment. Even today insurance claims refer to earthquakes and floods as “acts of God.” In the 1600s and long beyond, our ancestors invoked the same phrase, but they spoke of God’s mysterious will with fright and cowering awe.
