God’s Terrible Voice in the City in Modern English

Some might think it would have been more timely for a work of this kind to come out immediately after the sound of God’s terrible voice, or at least immediately after the execution of his last dreadful judgment, the Fire. For if a man strikes while the iron is hot, he is likely to make a deeper impression; once it cools, it grows hard and will no longer take the hammer. If the hammer of the Word had been used when London had just come out of the furnace, some might think the people would have yielded more easily to its strokes and taken more readily the shape this hammer would work them into. Now that the fresh and lively memory of the judgment has largely worn off, it is to be feared that they have cooled and hardened, and so it will likely be harder to make the Word drive a fitting impression of these judgments into them.

Yet besides the fact that I had no thought of attempting this work until most of the winter was spent, I may add something further. A discourse on the Plague would certainly have been most timely during that judgment itself. People were then generally cut off from their trades, and they had more room and time for withdrawing and reflecting than they had ever had in their lives before, so they were more likely to take to heart whatever might be spoken or written to them on that subject. But the case is not the same with the judgment of the Fire. However startling and astonishing it was, it was so far from giving them time to withdraw and reflect, as the earlier judgment of the Plague had done, that it pressed them into harder labor than they had ever known. This was true not only while London was burning, as they carried away whatever goods they could save from the fire, but ever since, as they have looked for new homes and fitted out their houses and shops for trade. All this has distracted them so much that I fear they could hardly settle their minds to read and consider as seriously as they should what the Lord has been doing with them, and saying to them, by this terrible voice that has sounded so loudly in their ears.

But by this time, I hope, most have reached some kind of settled state, at least enough to allow them to sit down and ponder what God means by these strange and dreadful judgments of Plague and Fire in the City. And so this book may be more timely for most readers than if it had been written and put into their hands immediately after the Fire had burned them out of their homes.

Friends, it is high time for all of you to withdraw and collect yourselves, to think seriously and wisely consider God’s dealings with you, to open your ears and work hard to understand these speaking judgments. Take care, for if your deafness and your refusal to be corrected provoke God to speak a third time, it may be in your utter ruin and desolation.

These papers aim to revive in your memories the judgments themselves, by the historical narrative of them you have here; to work your hearts to some sense of sin, by uncovering the cause; and to persuade you to comply readily with God’s purpose, by declaring what God now expects from you after such dreadful executions. If they help you in any of these ways, then, as the benefit will be yours, so I desire that God may have all the glory. And I ask you to repay my help to you in this way: help me with your prayers, so that I may be all the more helpful to you in mine.

I am your dearly affectionate friend and servant in the Lord,

Thomas Vincent

By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us (Ps 65:5).

Introduction

“Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:6, 8). When the Pharisees told our Savior to rebuke his disciples for praising the Lord so loudly with their hosannas, he told them, “If they should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out” (Luke 19:39-40). And in Habakkuk 2:11 we read of the stone crying out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber answering it. Certainly we in London have lately heard the cry of stones and walls, of timber and beams, in their fall and in their flames. I mean in the recent dreadful fire, which has laid our Jerusalem in heaps. Or rather, we have heard the voice of God in this and in other terrible things that have come upon us. So let no one rebuke me if someone as unfit as I am attempts to say something about the meaning of London’s fire, or of God’s terrible voice in this and other judgments, since God can declare his will by the mouth of babes.

The Text and Its Doctrines

By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us (Ps 65:5).

This whole psalm breathes out nothing but grace and goodness toward the people of God, from beginning to end. Even in the verse of my text, where God speaks most terribly and righteously in the judgments and destructions he brings on their enemies, he is still called the God of their salvation. And the terrible things by which God speaks are not only a righteous answer to their enemies’ sins but also a gracious answer to his people’s prayers: By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us.

I will not speak of terrible things in the restricted sense, as they fall only on the enemies of God’s people and on the wicked, while the righteous escape and perhaps are even preserved by them. I will speak of them as they may fall on any people, not excluding God’s people, whom the Lord may answer by terrible things in righteousness.

We may observe two doctrines here.

Doctrine 1. God sometimes speaks to a people by terrible things.

Doctrine 2. When God speaks most terribly, he answers most righteously.

First, that God sometimes speaks to a people by terrible things.

Here I will show, first, how God may be said to speak; second, what those terrible things are by which God sometimes speaks; and third, why God sometimes speaks to a people by terrible things. Then I will apply it.

How God May Be Said to Speak

God is a spirit. He has no mouth or tongue in the proper sense, as men have, since they have bodies, and so his way of speaking is not like ours. It is true that he has sometimes created a voice, in sound as articulate as if it had come from a man’s mouth, to declare his will. But there are several ways in which God has spoken and still speaks to the children of men, by which he makes his mind known as really and effectively as if he spoke with a human voice.

1. In former times God spoke to men immediately, in extraordinary ways, and sometimes very terribly. So it was when he gave the law on Mount Sinai. The mountain burned with fire, and there was blackness, and darkness, and tempest, thunderings and lightnings, and the sound of the trumpet exceedingly loud, and the voice of words so exceedingly terrible that it made the whole camp tremble (Exod 19:16). Moses himself said, “I exceedingly fear and quake” (Heb 12:18-21).

The children of Israel could not bear this way of God’s speaking. So they asked that Moses might speak to them instead, and that God would not speak to them like this anymore, for fear that they would die (Exod 20:19).

At other times God spoke with a stiller, gentler voice and in a milder way. When he spoke to Samuel in the night, Samuel thought at first that it was the voice of Eli (1 Sam 3:4-5). This is how God spoke to Abraham, to Jacob, and to Moses, of whom it is said that God spoke to him face to face, as a man speaks to his friend (Exod 33:11).

God also spoke in an extraordinary way to his prophets of old, when he made his counsel known to them so that they could declare it to the people. Sometimes he spoke to them with an audible voice, which he created when no shape was seen. Sometimes he spoke by angels, who appeared in bodies and laid them down again once they had delivered their message. Sometimes he spoke by dreams and visions in the night, sometimes by Urim and Thummim, and sometimes by more secret inspirations of the Spirit.

In the last days of God’s extraordinary speaking, he spoke by the most extraordinary person, namely his own most dearly beloved and only begotten Son (Heb 1:1-2). God sent him out of his bosom to declare God himself (John 1:18) and to reveal what he had heard of the Father (John 15:15). The Son brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, made known God’s purpose and grace in man’s salvation (2 Tim 1:9-10), and uttered things that had been kept secret from the foundation of the world (Matt 13:35). The gospel began to be spoken by the Lord Jesus himself, and was continued and confirmed by his apostles, who were his witnesses. God also bore witness to them with signs and wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his will (Heb 2:3-4).

2. And now, though not so immediately or in such extraordinary ways, God still speaks to the children of men. There are two ways in which God speaks to men now: by his Word and by his works.

(1) He speaks by his Word, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which holy men wrote as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet 1:21). In this way God speaks either externally, by his Word alone, or internally, by his Spirit together with his Word.

[1] God now speaks to men externally by his Word alone. To some he speaks more silently. He gives them only his Scriptures to read and puts his written Word alone before their eyes, without the advantage of other ordinances that might declare his will to them more powerfully. To others he speaks more audibly: the gospel sounds in their ears, and along with the Scriptures God sends his ministers to preach to them.

God speaks by his ministers. They are his watchmen, who warn the people in his name of the judgments, temporal and eternal, that he has threatened in the Scriptures (Ezek 3:17-18; Isa 62:6). They are the Lord’s ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20), and they hold a commission from him to preach the gospel and to declare the glad tidings of salvation to all who repent, believe, and yield themselves up to obey the Word.

Ministers stand in Christ’s place. And it is well for us that God speaks to us by ministers, because we could not endure it if he spoke to us immediately himself. If he spoke to us with an audible voice, as he did to the children of Israel on Mount Sinai when he gave the law, it would be so terrible that we, like them, would want to hear Moses instead, and would choose to have ministers speak to us. Indeed, suppose Christ Jesus himself came down from heaven. However well he could be heard in his state of humiliation, when his deity was so thoroughly veiled, what if he appeared now in the glory he has with the Father? Or what if he appeared as he did to John, his beloved disciple, when his eyes were like a flame of fire, his face like the sun shining in its full strength, and his voice like the sound of many waters? I say, if Christ appeared like this and preached to us, such dread and amazement would fall on us that we would fall down dead at his feet, as his disciple John did (Rev 1:13-17). So in this state of weakness it is better for us that God speaks to us by ministers, men of like passions and infirmities with ourselves. We are able to bear them, and in spite of our weakness we are able to hear their words.

[2] God now also speaks to men internally, by his Spirit together with his Word. He does this when he sends his Spirit with his Word only for conviction, or for some common work. In this way God calls on the wicked who sit under the preaching of the Word. He moves and strives with them by his Spirit, but they resist the Spirit, stifle their convictions, and will not listen to his calls and promptings (Gen 6:3; Acts 7:51).

But God speaks with his Word by his Spirit above all when he sends his Spirit for conversion, to bring about a saving change. This is how God speaks when he calls blind sinners out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9); when he gives life to dead sinners, putting a new principle of spiritual life into them (Eph 2:1); when he rescues enslaved sinners out of Satan’s snare (2 Tim 2:26), delivering them from the power of the devil and transferring them into the kingdom of his dear Son (Col 1:13); and when by his Spirit he draws sinners (John 6:44) and joins them to Jesus Christ (1 Cor 6:17). God speaks to men with his Word by his Spirit when he effectually calls them in this way. He also speaks to men by his Spirit when he graciously visits those who are called. He teaches, melts, warms, enlivens, strengthens and refreshes them by his Spirit as they sit under the influence of his ordinances. He speaks peace to their consciences, shows them his reconciled face, sheds abroad his love in their hearts, and gives them such sweet comforts and ravishing joy as is unspeakable and full of glory (John 6:45; John 14:26; Luke 24:32; Ps 143:11; Eph 3:16; Acts 3:19; Ps 85:8; Rom 5:5; Ps 94:19; 1 Pet 1:8).

(2) God speaks to men by his works, either by his works of creation or by his works of providence.

[1] God speaks by his works of creation. The heavens have a voice and declare God’s glory (Ps 19:1). The earth has not only an ear to hear (Isa 1:2) but also, as it were, a tongue to speak God’s praise. We read of the seas roaring and the floods clapping their hands, of the mountains singing and the trees of the wood sounding out their joyful acclamations. Yes, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, dragons and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, rain and stormy wind: as they fulfill his word, so they speak, and in their own way declare what their Maker is. Or rather, God speaks in them and by them, and makes something of himself known (Ps 148:7-8, 10).

We read of the voice of the Lord in power, the voice of the Lord in majesty, the voice of the Lord upon the waters, the voice of the Lord dividing the flames of fire, the voice of the Lord shaking the wilderness of Kadesh, breaking the cedars of Lebanon, and the like. This is the voice of the Lord in the terrible noise of thunder (Ps 29:3-8).

And there is no single work of the Lord, even without such a noise, that does not proclaim to the children of men with a loud voice, as it were, in the name of the Lord, how great and glorious the Lord is who gave it its being, its use and its place in the world. This is especially true of God’s work in the making of man. His body, with its members and senses, and his soul, with its powers and faculties, speak without a tongue the praise of the God who intricately framed the body in the womb and directly breathed in the living soul (Ps 139:14-15; Zech 12:1).

[2] God speaks by his works of providence, both merciful and afflictive.

(a) God speaks by his merciful providences. By his patience and bounty and goodness he calls men to repentance (Rom 2:4). He bears witness to himself by giving rain and fruitful seasons (Acts 14:17).

God’s providing mercies, God’s preventing mercies, God’s preserving mercies, God’s delivering mercies; the number of God’s mercies, which cannot be counted; the order and strange method of God’s mercies, which cannot be declared; the greatness of God’s mercies in their kinds and strange circumstances, which cannot be expressed: all of these, with open mouth, call on men from the Lord to repent of the sins they have committed against him, and to give him all love, thankfulness and obedience.

(b) God speaks by his afflictive providences. There is a voice of God in his rod as well as in his Word: “Hear the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Mic 6:9). When God chastens, he teaches (Ps 94:12). When God lifts up his hand and strikes, he also opens his mouth and speaks; and sometimes he opens men’s ears too, and seals their instruction (Job 33:16).

Sometimes God speaks more mildly by rods, by lesser afflictions. Sometimes he speaks more terribly by scorpions, by greater judgments. This leads to the second particular.

The word for “terrible things” in the original Hebrew comes from a root that means “he feared.” Terrible things are those great judgments of God that usually strike a general fear into people’s hearts.

Take some instances.

1. The plague is a terrible judgment by which God speaks to men. The Hebrew word for it comes from a root meaning “he spoke.” It is a speaking judgment. Where God sends the plague, he speaks, and he speaks terribly. The plague is very terrible because it produces terror. The “Pestilence which walketh in darkness” is called “the Terror by night” (Ps 91:5-6).

The plague is very terrible for these reasons:

(1) It is such a poisonous disease. It poisons the blood and spirits and breeds a strange kind of venom in the body. Sometimes this venom breaks out in boils and blisters and great carbuncles. At other times it works more dangerously, preying more inwardly upon the vital organs.

(2) It is such a noisome and foul disease. It turns the healthy humors of the body into rottenness, which comes out through running sores and gives off a most noisome smell. We read of such a disease for loathsomeness: “My wounds stink and are corrupt, my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh; my lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off” (Ps 38:5, 7, 11).

(3) It is such an infectious disease. It spreads worse than leprosy did among the Jews. It infects not only those who are weak and infirm in body and full of bad humors, but also those who are young, strong, healthy and of the soundest constitution, and sometimes these sooner than the others. The plague is infectious, and greatly infectious. Whole cities have been emptied of people by its spreading, and many whole families have caught the infection, and death with it, one from another. This is the third thing that makes the plague so terrible.

(4) It is so deadly. It kills without mercy wherever it comes. It kills (I had almost said certainly): very few escape, especially when it first arrives and before its malignity is spent. Few are touched by it without being killed by it. And it kills suddenly. It gives no warning before it comes; suddenly the arrow is shot that wounds to the heart. So it gives little time for preparation before it brings a person to the grave. Under other diseases people may linger on for many weeks and months, and under some for several years. But the plague usually kills within a few days, sometimes within a few hours of its first approach, however strong and free from disease the body was before.

The plague is very terrible. It is terrible to those who have it, since it usually comes with grim Death, the King of Terrors, in its hand. And it is terrible to those who do not have it, because of their danger of catching it. The fear of this has made such an impression on some that it has erased from their hearts, for the time being, all feelings of love and pity toward their nearest relatives and dearest friends. When the disease first seized those friends, and they had the greatest need of help, these people left them in their distress and fled from them as if they had been their enemies.

2. A deluge of water is a terrible judgment. We read in histories of several floods that suddenly broke in upon some places and overwhelmed houses and inhabitants together.

But God never did, and never will, speak as terribly by a deluge of water as he did by the great Deluge in the days of Noah, when the whole world was drowned by it, except Noah and those who were with him in the ark.

Because that judgment was so dreadful, and the history so moving, I will set it before your eyes from Genesis 7:11-24. “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, and the seventeenth day of the month, in the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up.” God withdrew the bounds he had set for the great sea, so that the waters covered the earth as they had at the beginning. “And the windows of heaven were opened,” and out of them God looked forth in anger upon the earth and poured out a vial of his wrath. He made it rain forty days and forty nights in dreadful showers, probably accompanied by stormy winds and a hideous tempest that threw the world into fright and amazement. When the very air seemed to have turned into water, and such a torrent poured in upon them from every side, we may guess what fear overwhelmed them. But Noah and his family had gotten into the ark, and the Lord “shut them in; then the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth, and the waters increased, and prevailed greatly upon the earth, and the ark went upon the face of the waters, so that all the high hills and mountains were covered fifteen cubits: Then all flesh died, fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every thing that creeped or moved on the earth, and every man, and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.” God spoke terribly indeed to the wicked world then by the Flood, which devoured them all together in the middle of their complacency and sin. But God has promised that he will never speak this way by water again.

3. Fire is another terrible thing by which God sometimes calls to contend with a sinful people. Fire is very dreadful when it has a commission from God, meets with plenty of combustible matter, and prevails without resistance. God spoke terribly by fire to Sodom and Gomorrah when he rained fire and brimstone on those cities and consumed them. See Genesis 19:24-29: “The Lord rained fire and brimstone out of heaven, and overthrew those cities and the inhabitants together; and when Abraham looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and the land of the plain, he saw the smoke of the country go up like the smoke of a furnace.”

God spoke terribly, though not so terribly, to Jerusalem when he allowed the Babylonians to set their city on fire and burn their temple to the ground. See Jeremiah 52:12-13.

But the most fearful instances of God’s terrible voice by fire are still to come. God will speak this way by fire to spiritual Babylon, which can easily be proved to be Rome from Revelation 17:18, since she was the great city of that day which reigned over the kings of the earth. You may read of Babylon’s burning with fire in Revelation 18:8-10: “Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burnt with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her: And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication, and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning; standing afar off for fear of her torment, saying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon! that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”

God spoke terribly by fire when London was in flames, of which I will speak in the application. But he will speak far more terribly when Babylon is in flames, and burned not just in part but wholly, utterly and irreparably, and turned to ashes. Then not only will the city be consumed, but the whore herself will be hated and made desolate and devoured with fire by the kings of the earth (Rev 17:16).

The last instance of God’s speaking terribly by fire will be on the last day. Then the Lord Jesus Christ, the Judge of the living and the dead, will come down from heaven “in flaming fire, to take vengeance on all those that know not God, and obey not the gospel” (2 Thess 1:7-8). And the apostle Peter tells us that the heavens and the earth are reserved in store for fire against this day (2 Pet 3:7), when “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth, and all the works therein shall be burnt up” (2 Pet 3:10). Then God will speak terribly by fire. And above all, he will speak most terribly to the ungodly world when he sentences them to the fire of hell and casts them into it, where they must dwell with devouring fire and live in everlasting burnings.

4. The sword is a dreadful judgment by which God sometimes speaks very terribly, especially when he draws it against his own enemies and his people’s enemies. Hear how terribly God speaks, as in Deuteronomy 32:39-42: “See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God with me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand: For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and reward them that hate me; I will make mine arrows drunk with blood (and my sword shall devour flesh) and that with the blood of the slain, and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemies.”

When God furbishes his sword and sharpens it; when God straps his sword on his thigh and marches against his enemies; when he draws his sword and makes slaughter with it; when his sword devours much flesh and is made drunk with the blood of the slain; when God gives the sword its commission, saying, “Sword, go through such a land” (Ezek 14:17), and pours out his fury on the land in blood (Ezek 14:19), so that the sword is bathed in blood, garments are rolled in blood, and the land is soaked in blood; when blood is poured out like water, and dead bodies are thrown into the open field without burial, and God invites every bird of the air to gather together and feast on the carcasses of the slain (Ezek 39:17-20); when God comes “with dyed garments from Bozrah” (Isa 63:1); when he gathers the nations and brings them into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and makes his mighty ones come down there against them (Joel 3:2, 11); when the day of God’s indignation comes, and he makes such slaughter among his enemies that the earth stinks with their carcasses and the mountains melt with their blood (Isa 34:2-3); when God “treadeth the winepress of his wrath without the city, and the blood comes out of the winepress even to the horses’ bridles” (Rev 14:20); in a word, when the Lord comes out on his white horse with his armies and destroys the Beast and all the powers of the earth that take his side (Rev 19:11-21): then God will speak terribly indeed against his enemies by the sword. Then he will roar out of Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and in such a way that both the heavens and the earth will tremble (Joel 3:16).

And indeed God speaks with a terrible voice wherever he sends the sword and makes the alarm of war be heard, as he sometimes sends it among his own people for their sin (1 Kgs 8:33).

Suppose God brings into a land a people of another language and religion, of fierce face and cruel disposition, and gives them power to prevail and bring the land under their feet. The mighty men are cut off by them, and the men of valor are crushed in the gate. The young men flee and fall before them, and there is no one to put up any resistance. They break in upon cities, plunder houses, rape women and girls, strip and spoil, and put all to the sword, the young along with the gray-headed. They cruelly rip open pregnant women, and without any pity they dash little infants against the stones. God speaks more terribly by such a judgment than by plague or fire.

5. Famine is a dreadful judgment by which God sometimes speaks very terribly to a people. When God stretches over a place “the lines of confusion, and the stones of emptiness” (Isa 34:11); when God sends “cleanness of teeth” into cities (Amos 4:6); when God shoots “the evil arrows of famine” into a land (Ezek 5:16), and it becomes exceedingly severe: this is one of the most dreadful of all judgments in this world, far beyond plague, or fire, or sword. See how movingly Jeremiah describes the famine among the Jews in Lamentations 4:4-12:

“The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask for bread, and no man breaketh it unto them. They that feed delicately are desolate in the streets. They that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills. For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown in a moment, and no hand stayed on her. The Nazarites were purer than snow; whiter than milk; they were more ruddy in body than rubies; their polishing was of sapphire: their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their bones, it is withered, it is become like a stick. They that be slain with the sword, are better than they which be slain with hunger; for these pine away stricken through for want of the fruits of the earth. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children, they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people. The Lord hath accomplished his fury, he hath poured out his fierce anger.”

6. The sixth terrible judgment is a famine of the Word, which is threatened in Amos 8:11-12: “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east, and they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.”

A famine of the Word is a worse judgment than a famine of bread. Few really think so, it is true, because most people judge by their senses. But it is plain to a person of faith and consideration that it is so. The soul is more excellent than the body, and the concerns of the other life far exceed the concerns of this life. So the provisions for the soul are more excellent than the provisions for the body, and the means of gaining eternal life are to be preferred to the means of preserving this temporal life. It follows, then, that a dearth and scarcity of provisions for the soul must be a greater judgment than a scarcity of provisions for the body. To this I might add that a famine of the Word usually brings many temporal judgments with it. The burning of the temple at Jerusalem and the failing of vision were accompanied by slaughter with the sword and the captivity of the land.

7. And lastly, God speaks most terribly to a people when he sends several of these judgments together, as in Lamentations 1:20: “Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is death.” That is, when there are enemies outside and plague and famine within. God speaks terribly when fire and sword go together, or sword and famine, or famine and plague, or famine of bread and famine of the Word.

These are some of the terrible things by which God sometimes speaks.

Why is it that the Lord speaks to a people by such terrible things?

The reason is that people will not listen to him when he speaks in any other way. “God speaketh once, yea twice, but men perceive it not” (Job 33:14). God’s gentle voice is not heard or heeded, so he speaks more loudly and terribly, so that people may be awakened to hear. In particular, God speaks this terribly for the following reasons.

1. Because people do not listen to the voice of his word and his messengers. God speaks audibly by ministers, and when they are not regarded, he speaks in a way people can feel, by judgments. He speaks first by threatenings, and when these are slighted, he speaks by executions. God first lifts up his voice and warns by his word before he lifts up his arm and strikes with his rod. When people grow hard of hearing toward the sweet calls of the gospel, God is in effect forced to thunder so that he may pierce their ears. When God speaks to the ears and they are shut, he speaks to the eyes and the other senses, so that his mind may be known. Above all, when people obstinately refuse to hear, God is exceedingly provoked to execute his terrible judgments on them. See Zechariah 7:11-12: “But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears that they should not hear: yea they made their heart like an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of Hosts had sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came there a great wrath from the Lord of Hosts.” So too, when God gave Jerusalem up to desolation and ruin, look at the sin that provoked the Lord to it: “They mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chr 36:16).

2. Because they do not listen to the voice of his goodness and mercies. The goodness and forbearance of God speak to people on his behalf, calling on them to give up their sin for very shame, and to repent and return to him (Rom 2:4). But people despise the riches of his goodness, deafen their ears to the language of his mercies, and trample his patience underfoot. God has indeed appointed a day of wrath hereafter, in which he will reckon with the whole ungodly world together and give them what their sin justly deserves. Yet sometimes, when people treat him this way, his patience is turned into fury, and his anger breaks out into a flame and consumes them with the blow of dreadful temporal judgments.

3. Because they will not listen to the voice of lesser afflictions. When God’s word is not heard, he speaks by his rod. When his rod is not heard, he shoots with his arrows and strikes with his sword. And if lesser afflictions are not heeded, then God speaks by more dreadful, awakening judgments. Just as people’s sins come before God’s judgments, so lesser judgments usually come before greater ones. There are degrees and steps that people usually pass through before they arrive at a great height of sin (no one becomes utterly vile all at once), and in the same way there are degrees and steps that God usually takes in inflicting his judgments for sin.

Look at one passage that stands for all, which shows how God proceeds from lesser to greater judgments: Leviticus 26:15-40. When his statutes are despised and his covenant broken, he first threatens to send consumption and a burning fever on them. Then he threatens that they will fall before their enemies. If they will not listen to his voice in these judgments, he threatens to punish them seven times more for their sins, to make the heavens like iron and the earth like brass, and to send scarcity among them. If they still will not listen, he threatens to send wild beasts to devour their children and their cattle. If they will not be reformed by these things, but still walk contrary to him, he threatens to walk contrary to them and to punish them yet seven times more for their sins. He threatens to bring a sword on them to avenge the quarrel of his covenant, and, when they gather together in their cities, to send the pestilence among them, and to add famine on top of it. And if they still will not listen to God, but go on walking contrary to him, he threatens to walk contrary to them in fury: to make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, to lay waste their cities, and to make their sanctuaries a desolation. On those who are left alive he threatens to send such faintness of heart that they will flee at the sound of a shaken leaf and fall when no one is pursuing them, and will waste away in their iniquities in the land of their enemies.

So God proceeds by steps and degrees in executing his fierce anger on a rebellious people. When God speaks by ordinary diseases and is not heard, he sometimes sends a plague. If after a plague people will not return to him who strikes them, nor seek to appease God’s anger that is kindled against them, but walk all the more contrary to him, he may walk contrary to them in fury and send fire into their cities to devour their homes. If the voice of the fire is not heard, he has other judgments ready: sword, famine, and the like. And if temporal judgments are not heeded, he will bring eternal judgments on them.

God is not heard in any other way; that is why he speaks by such terrible things.

Application. God sometimes speaks to a people by terrible things.

These last few years have given sad examples of this in England, and especially the last two years in our City of London. The voice of the Lord has been in the city; it has been loud and full of terror. The Lord has come out against us with armed vengeance. Frowns have been on his brow, death and desolation in his looks, thunder in his voice, and flames of fire in his hand; the pestilence has gone before him, and burning coals at his feet (Hab 3:5). He has sent out his arrows, which have scattered us, and shot out his lightnings, which have routed us. The Lord has thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice, hailstones and coals of fire (Ps 18:13-14). The Lord has visited us with storm and tempest and great noise (Isa 29:6).

Yes, he has caused his glorious voice to be heard, and has shown his arm coming down, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of devouring fire, with scattering and tempest and hailstones (Isa 30:30). Then the furrows of the earth were seen, and the foundations of the city were laid bare (Ps 18:15). The earth also shook because he was angry (Ps 18:7), and the inhabitants of London trembled because of his fierce anger. Then the snares of death surrounded us, and the fears of hell took hold of us (Ps 18:5), and our hearts were moved within us as trees are moved by the wind (Isa 7:2). Dreadful have God’s recent judgments in London been, and the report of them has gone out not only throughout the land but to the farthest parts of the world.

There are three things we should note in this terrible voice of God’s judgments: first, the judgments themselves; second, the cause of the judgments; and third, the design of the judgments. In the first we have the sound of the voice; in the last two, the interpretation of the voice.

1. Concerning the judgments themselves. Here I might speak of the judgment carried out on August 24, 1662, when so many ministers were put out of their places, and of the judgment carried out on March 24, 1665, when so many ministers were banished five miles from any corporate town. The first came as a prelude to the plague, which some time afterward spread through the land but raged chiefly in the city. The second came as a prelude to the fire, which soon afterward burned down London, the greatest corporate town in England. These judgments were so recent and so general throughout the land, and I presume so generally known in all their circumstances, that it would be needless to give an account of them here.

But this I must say: I wish they were as generally believed to be judgments, and taken to heart accordingly. For I fear that people’s great insensibility to these judgments, because they did not touch the flesh, together with their stupid thoughtlessness about God’s dreadful displeasure in them, has provoked the Lord to send judgments that have come nearer to the senses. He did this so that people might perceive that God was angry indeed before, and that his greater displeasure in the former judgments might be known by his more keenly felt displeasure in the latter.

Let London seriously consider whether her gospel privileges were not her best defense against temporal calamities. And let her consider whether, since she slighted, abused and forfeited them, and God seized them and stripped her of so much of them, she has not been laid bare to those heavy strokes of extraordinary judgment that she has lately received.

London had the gospel: ordinances that were powerful, pure and plentiful, and ministers excellently qualified and exceptionally furnished with gifts for the ministry. London had as many burning and shining lights as any single spot of ground under the vault of heaven.

Not to speak of their abilities in preaching and in defending the truth, London’s ministers had such gifts of prayer, which were no small defense of the city, as I believe no city in the world could equal.

Oh, what prayers there used to be in London’s pulpits, especially on days of solemn humiliation! How the spirits of the ministers were sometimes carried out in prayer for several hours together (without tautologies and vain repetitions), in such a variety of heartfelt outpourings, and with such elevation and rapture of spirit, as if they were just leaving the body to go and live and abide with God, and would converse no more with men or worldly things!

In their confessions of sin, how they raked into the dunghill of a rotten heart and laid out its inward filthiness to view! How they traced the footsteps of its deceitfulness through the maze and wilderness of its many windings and turnings! How they pierced into the very bowels of sin and ripped it open, as it were, to the backbone, bringing its very entrails into open view! How they anatomized, as it were, the body of death in all its parts and members, uncovering at the same time the various diseases of every part, with their causes and manner of working! And all this in such moving and cutting expressions, accompanied with such brokenness and bleeding of heart, as no set form can imitate or produce.

In their petitions for the pardon of sin and for spiritual and heavenly riches, oh, with what feeling and fervor they expressed themselves! Oh, with what faith and persistence they wrestled and pleaded at the throne of grace for such favors, more persistently than poor prisoners begging through the grates, or poor beggars at the doors, when they are most earnest for relief! Indeed, how they besieged God, as it were, and seemed as if they would scale the walls of heaven itself and take the kingdom of heaven by violence and force! How they even pressed in upon God by the force of argument and laid hold on him with the hand of faith, resolved not to let him go without a blessing!

In their petitions for the church and the land, they conducted themselves as if they had no private concerns at all. But how they carried London on their hearts when they came to the throne of grace! What yearning compassion they had toward the city and for it! How many tears they shed in bewailing her sins! How they stood in the breach when the Lord was coming out against this place! How they held back his arm when it was lifted up to strike! How they stood weeping between the porch and the altar, crying, “Spare thy people, O Lord, and do not destroy London!” And many times they prevailed to appease God’s wrath and turn away his fierce anger, which had been kindled against us.

Gospel ordinances and gospel ministers were the safeguard of London, her glory and her defense. But the ordinances were slighted, and the ministers were mocked and mistreated by some who called themselves professors of religion, and both had fallen far in the esteem of most people. And London did not yield the fruit that God looked for under such careful tending (of which I will say more when I come to speak of London’s sins). So God was provoked not only to call some of his messengers home to himself, but also to allow the rest, those who were most conscientious, to be thrust into corners.

This, this foreshadowed London’s fast-approaching ruin and desolation, though few believed it. And because they did not believe it, and were insensible of God’s wrath in this judgment, their danger from the other judgments that have since come upon them was all the greater. When so many stakes were pulled out, it is no wonder the hedge was broken down; when so many pillars were removed, it is no wonder the building tumbled to the ground.

But I proceed now to give an account of the later judgments of plague and fire.

A plague so great and so recent should not be forgotten. Yet the fire came more recently still, and was proportionately greater, and amazing fears have risen within us since. I am afraid these may shuffle our earlier thoughts out of our minds and erase the impressions the plague made on us, impressions we should labor to keep until our dying hour. Therefore I will give a brief account of this sad judgment, with some observations of my own, since I was here in the City from the beginning of the plague to its end. I do this to keep alive in myself and in others the memory of the judgment, so that we may be better prepared to comply with God’s design in sending the plague among us.

It was in the year of our Lord 1665 that the plague began in our City of London. We had been warned by the great plague in Holland in the year 1664, and by its beginning in some remote parts of our own land that same year. I will say nothing about whether there was any meaning or influence in the blazing star that appeared within view of London not long before and struck many people’s spirits with some amazement. It was in the month of May that the plague was first noticed. Our bill of mortality had told us of only three who died of the disease in the whole year before. But at the beginning of May the bill tells us of nine who fell by the plague, one right in the heart of the City and the other eight in the suburbs. This was the first arrow of warning shot from heaven among us, and fear quickly begins to creep over people’s hearts. There is much anxious thought and talk in town about the plague, and people turn over in their minds where they should go if the plague increases. Yet when the next week’s bill shows them the disease down from 9 to 3, their minds are somewhat calmed. Talk on the subject cools, fears are hushed, and hope takes their place: hope that the black cloud only threatened and let fall a few drops, and that the wind would drive it away.

But then the next bill shows the deaths from the plague mounting from 3 to 14, the one after that to 17, and the one after that to 43, and the disease begins to increase and spread so much that now complacent sinners begin to be startled, and those who would have slept on quietly in their nests are unwillingly awakened. Now great dismay seizes most people, with fearful forebodings of a desolating judgment. Now guilty sinners begin to look about them and think to themselves what corner of the land they might fly to and hide. Now the profane and sensual, even if they feel no remorse for their sins, cannot drive away the dread and terrors that guilt produces. By company and carousing and soft pleasures they may drug and smooth over their spirits in the daytime. Yet we may guess what dread returns upon them if they allow themselves any time alone, and what hideous thoughts such people have in the silent night through fear of the death they are in danger of. Now those who did not believe in an unseen God are afraid of unseen arrows. Those who slighted God’s threatenings of eternal judgments tremble as he begins to carry out one temporal judgment, and that not the greatest. Now those who had, as it were, challenged the God of heaven and defied him with their horrid oaths and blasphemies retreat when he begins to appear; indeed, they fly away in terror and amazement. The great orbs begin to move first. The lords and gentry retire to their country estates; their distant houses are made ready, their goods are moved, and London is soon at their backs. Few swaggering gallants walk the streets; few ladies with beauty patches are to be seen at the windows. There was a great forsaking of the neighboring places where the plague first raged.

In June the number rises from 43 to 112, the next week to 168, the next to 267, and the next to 470. Most of this increase was in the outlying parts. This month few died within the walls of the City or near them, and few who had any reputation for goodness or for a profession of religion were struck at first. God gave them warning to think things over and prepare themselves. Yet a few choice people were struck quite soon, so that the best might not promise themselves an exemption, or interpret any place of Scripture so literally as if the Lord had promised his own people absolute and general immunity and protection from this disease of the plague.

Now the citizens of London are brought to a halt in the course of their trade. They begin to fear the people they talk with and deal with, in case these have come from infected places. Now roses and other sweet flowers wither in the gardens and are disregarded in the markets. People dare not hold them to their noses, for fear that along with the sweet scent they might draw in something infectious. Rue and wormwood are carried in the hand, myrrh and zedoary in the mouth, and few go out in the morning without some antidote. Now many houses are shut up where the plague comes, and the inhabitants shut in, so that they will not spread the infection by going out. It was very dismal to see the red crosses and to read in great letters on the doors, Lord have mercy upon us, with watchmen standing before them with halberds. There was such a solitude about those places, and people passed by them so gingerly and with such fearful looks, as if the houses had been lined with enemies lying in ambush to destroy them.

Now rich tradesmen make ready to leave. If they have no country houses, they look for lodgings away from the City for themselves and their families. Poorer tradesmen, imitating the rich in their fear, stretch themselves to take a journey into the country, though they hardly have the means to bring themselves back again. Many of the ministers also take the occasion to go to their country places for the summer, or perhaps to seek out a few of their parishioners who had gone before them. They leave the greater part of their flock without food or medicine at the time of their greatest need. (I do not speak of all ministers; those who stayed out of choice and duty deserve true honor.) Possibly they thought that God was now preaching to the City, so what need was there of their preaching? Or rather, did not the thunder of God’s voice frighten their guilty consciences and make them fly away, in case a bolt from heaven should fall on them and spoil their preaching for the future? And so they would save themselves until the people had less need of them. I do not blame many citizens for withdrawing, when there was so little trade, and when the presence of everyone might have helped the infection increase and spread. But how many did guilt drive away, where duty would have bound them to stay in their place? Now the highways are thronged with travelers and goods, and London empties itself into the country. Great are the stir and hurry in London from the removal of so many families. Fear puts many thousands to flight, and those who can fly farthest from the City think themselves safest.

In July the plague increases and prevails exceedingly. The 470 who died of the disease in one week rise to 725 the next week, to 1,089 the next, to 1,843 the next, and to 2,010 the next. Now the plague surrounds the walls of the City like a flood and pours in upon it. Now most parishes are infected, both outside the walls and within. Indeed, more houses are shut up by their owners abandoning them for fear of the plague than by the plague itself. And though the inhabitants have been so greatly reduced by the departure of so many thousands, the number of the dying increases fearfully. Now the country districts post guards, for fear that infected people from the City should bring the disease to them. Most of the rich are gone by now, and the middle sort will not stay behind; but the poor are forced by poverty to stay and endure the storm. Now most faces grow pale. What dismal apprehensions then fill people’s minds, and what dreadful fears possess their spirits, especially those whose consciences are full of guilt and who have not made their peace with God! The old drunkards and swearers and unclean people are brought into great straits. They look to the right and to the left, and death is marching toward them from every side, and they do not know where to fly to escape it.

Now the arrows begin to fly very thick about their ears. They see many fellow sinners fall before their faces and expect every hour to be struck themselves. The very sinking fear they have had of the plague has brought the plague and death upon many. Some, at the sight of a coffin in the street, have fallen into a shivering; immediately the disease has assaulted them, and Sergeant Death has arrested them and clapped the doors of their houses shut on them, and they have never come out again until they were carried out to their graves. We may imagine the hideous thoughts and horrid perplexity of mind, the trembling, confusion and anguish of spirit, that some awakened sinners have had when the plague has broken into their houses and seized their near relatives, whose dying groans sounding in their ears have warned them to prepare. We may imagine it when their doors have been shut up and fastened on the outside with the inscription Lord have mercy upon us, and no one allowed in but a nurse, whom they have feared more than the plague itself. We may imagine it when lovers and friends and companions in sin have stood far off and not dared to come near the door of the house, for fear that death should come out of it upon them.

Above all we may imagine it when the disease has invaded their own bodies. It began with pain and dizziness in the head, and then trembling in the other limbs. They felt boils rising under their arms and in their groins, and saw blains break out on other parts. The disease worked in them to such a height that it sent out those spots which most think are the certain tokens of approaching death. Now they have received the sentence of death within themselves. They have concluded for certain that within a few hours they must go down into the dust, and that their naked souls, without the casing of the body, must make their passage into eternity and appear before the highest Majesty, to render their accounts and receive their sentence.

No one can express the horror that has been on the spirits of such people, through the lashes and stings of their guilty consciences, when they have called to mind a life of sensuality and profaneness: their uncleanness, drunkenness, injustice, oaths, curses, mockery of saints and of holiness, and neglect of their own salvation. A thousand sins have been set in order before their eyes, wearing a very different face from the one they wore in the hour of temptation. They find God irreconcilably angry with them. They find that the day of grace is over, the door of mercy is shut, and the pardon and salvation they once slighted are now beyond their reach. They find the grave now opening its mouth to receive their bodies, and hell opening its mouth to receive their souls. They perceive that they are now just entering a place of endless woe and torment; that they must now take up their lodging in the lower regions of utter darkness, with devils and their fellow damned sinners, and remain there forever in the extremity of misery, without any hope or possibility of release; and that they have foolishly brought themselves into this condition and been the cause of their own ruin. We may guess that the despairing agonies and anguish of such awakened sinners have been the most unbearable of all things, except only the very future miseries they were afraid of.

In August, how dreadful the increase is! From 2,010 the number climbs to 2,817 in one week, then to 3,880 the next, then to 4,237 the next, and then to 6,102 the next, and all these from the plague, besides other diseases.

Now the cloud is very black, and the storm comes down on us very sharply. Now death rides in triumph on his pale horse through our streets and breaks into almost every house where any inhabitants are to be found. Now people fall as thick as leaves from the trees in autumn when they are shaken by a mighty wind. Now there is a dismal solitude in the streets of London. Every day wears the face of a Sabbath, kept with greater solemnity than the Sabbath used to be kept in the City. Now the shops are shut, and people are rare; so few walk about that grass begins to spring up in some places. There is a deep silence almost everywhere, especially within the walls: no rattling coaches, no prancing horses, no calling in of customers or offering of wares, no London street cries sounding in the ears. If any voice is heard, it is the groans of dying people breathing out their last, and the funeral bells tolling for those about to be carried to their graves. Now the shutting up of infected houses is at an end, there being so many, and most of the healthy are mingled among the sick, who otherwise would have had no help. Now in some places where the people generally stayed, not one house in a hundred is free of infection. In many houses half the family is swept away; in some the whole, from the eldest to the youngest; few escape with the death of only one or two. Never did so many husbands and wives die together. Never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave, those who had lived together in the same house upon the earth going together into the same house under it. Now the nights are too short to bury the dead, and the whole day, long as it is, is hardly long enough to light to their beds the dead who fall in it.

Now we could hardly go out without meeting many coffins and seeing many people with sores, limping in the streets. Among other sad sights, two struck me deeply. One was a woman coming alone and weeping past the door where I lived (which was in the midst of the infection), with a little coffin under her arm, carrying it to the New Churchyard. I judged that she was the child’s mother, that all the rest of the family was dead, and that she was forced to put this last dead child of hers in its coffin and bury it with her own hands. The other was a man at the corner of the Artillery Wall. As I judge, the disease had seized him there, and through the dizziness in his head he had dashed his face against the wall. When I came by, he lay hanging over the rails with his bloody face, bleeding onto the ground. When I came back, he had been moved under a tree in Moorfields and lay on his back. I went and spoke to him. He could make me no answer but rattled in the throat, and, as I was told, he died there within half an hour.

It would be endless to tell what we have seen and heard of some in their frenzy: rising out of their beds and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring at their windows; some coming out almost naked and running into the streets. Others have said and done strange things when the disease was upon them. But it was very sad to hear of one who, being sick alone and probably delirious, burned himself in his bed. By now the plague had broken in heavily among my acquaintances. Of about sixteen or more whose faces I used to see every day in our house, within a short time I could find only four or six still alive. For a month or more together, I think, hardly a day passed over my head without my hearing of the death of one or more people I knew. One day I would hear that they had been struck, the next that there were some hopes of recovery, and the third that they were dead.

Then came September, when we hoped for a decrease because of the season, because of the number gone away, and because of the number already dead. Yet the plague had not reached its height. From the 6,102 who died of the plague in the last week of August, the number rose to 6,988 in the first week of September. We conceived some small hope when it fell to 6,544 the next week, but our hopes were quite dashed again when the week after that it rose to 7,165, which was the highest bill. And a dreadful bill it was! Of the 130 parishes in and about the City, only 4 were not infected, and in those there were few people remaining who had not gone into the country.

Now the grave opens its mouth without measure. Multitudes! Multitudes in the valley of the shadow of death, thronging daily into eternity! The churchyards are now stuffed so full of corpses that in many places they have swelled two or three feet higher than they were before, and new ground is broken up to bury the dead.

Now hell from beneath is moved at the number of guests received into its chambers. No doubt the number of the wicked who have died by the plague has been by far the greatest, as we may reasonably conclude without any breach of charity. And it is certain that all the wicked who died in their sin at that time were turned into hell. How greatly, then, are the damned spirits now increased! Some were damning themselves in their oaths a little before, and now God is damning their souls for it and passing on them the irreversible sentence of damnation. Some were drinking wine in bowls a little before, and strong drink without measure; and now God has put another cup into their hands, a cup of red wine, even the wine of the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty. Some a little before were feasting their senses, pleasing their appetites and satisfying the desires of the flesh, and, being past feeling, had given themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But now their laughter is turned into mourning, and their joy into howling and woe. Now they have recovered their feeling again. But instead of the pleasures they felt, and the sensual delights that deadened the feeling of their consciences, they are made to feel the heavy hand of God and to endure such anguish and horror, through the sense of God’s wrath, as no tongue can express. Now atheists believe there is a God, and those who rejected Scripture are convinced of the truth of God’s Word, as God carries out upon them the threatenings of his Word. Now the covetous and unjust, the malicious and cruel, the scoffers and the profane begin to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire. Nor are the ignorant excused, or the merely respectable who do not know Jesus Christ. Indeed, the hypocrites, with all the impenitent and unbelieving, are sent down to the place of weeping. Surely hell wonders to see so many come among them from such a city as London, where they have enjoyed such plenty of such powerful means of grace. And a place is given to them, even the lowest and hottest, where Judas and others are the most notable.

Yet hell does not take all who die in this visitation. There are some (though not the first or the most) who have room made for them in the mansions above. The plague makes little difference between the righteous and the wicked, except where the Lord by a special providence shelters some under his wing and surrounds them with his favor as with a shield, keeping off the darts that are shot so thick around them. As there is little difference between the body of the righteous and the bodies of others, so this disease makes little distinction, and not a few who fear God are cut off with the rest. They die of the same sickness as the most profane. They are buried in the same grave, and sleep there together until the morning of the resurrection. But as there is a difference in their spirits while they live, so there is a difference, and the chief difference, in their place and state after their separation from the body. Dives is carried to hell, and Lazarus to Abraham’s bosom, though he died with his body full of sores. Devils drag the souls of the wicked, after they have received their final doom at the bar of God, into utter darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But angels carry the souls of the righteous into the heavenly paradise, the new Jerusalem above, where God is in his glory and the Lord Jesus Christ at his right hand. There thousand thousands stand before him, and ten thousand times ten thousand minister to him, even an innumerable company of angels. There the spirits of all just men and women made perfect had been gathered before them. There is fullness of joy, and rivers of eternal pleasures run about the throne of God, whose streams make glad all the inhabitants of the new Jerusalem.

Now the weak prison doors of the body are broken down, and the strong everlasting gates of their Father’s palace are lifted up. The saints are received with joy and triumph into glory. They come with singing into Zion, with everlasting joy in their hearts, and all sorrow and sighing fly away like a cloud that will never be seen again. Now the veil is torn, and they enter the holy of holies, where God dwells, not in the darkness of a thick cloud as in the temple of old, but in the brightness of such marvelous light and glory as their eyes never saw, nor could it enter their hearts to conceive. There they have the vision of God’s face, with no eclipse upon the light of his countenance. There the treasures of God’s love are opened to them, and his arms open to receive them with the dearest and sweetest embraces, which kindle in their hearts a flame of love so ravishing and delightful that words cannot express it. There they are entertained by the Lord Jesus Christ, whom they have served in the world; and he who showed them his grace, which they wondered at when they were in the body, now shows them his glory, which they wonder at much more. There they are welcomed by angels, who, if they rejoiced at their conversion, rejoice much more at their coronation. There they sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of their Father. There they find Moses and David and Samuel and Paul, and all the holy martyrs and saints who died before them, among whom they are numbered and given their place, and who rejoice in their enlarged company.

And as there is a great difference between the condition of the souls of the righteous and of the wicked who died of the same disease of the plague, after their death and separation from the body, so there is a great difference in the bearing of their spirits at their death and on their sickbeds. Some wicked men are numb and senseless, given up to a judicial hardness, and die in a sleep of carnal complacency from which they are not awakened until they awaken in the midst of flames. Others are more aware. Considering what has been and what is coming upon them, they are filled with inexpressible terror through the roaring and tearing of a guilty, accusing conscience and the forethought of that horrible, unbearable torment they are so near. Now terrifying dreams frighten them, and fearfulness of the bottomless pit and the burning lake below overtakes them. Some break out in the anguish of their despairing souls, “Who can dwell with devouring fire, who can inhabit everlasting burnings?” (Isa 33:14). And however merry and full of pleasure their life has been, at their latter end they are utterly consumed with terrors.

But mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: the end of that man is peace (Ps 37:37). They may have had storms in their passage through a rough sea, with the wind blowing and the waves roaring. They may sometimes have been ready to sink through opposition and discouragement, sometimes overwhelmed with grief and doubts, and sometimes dashed upon the rocks of terror and perplexity. Yet now they have come to the haven of death. The winds are hushed and still, the waves are smooth and silent, the storm is over, and there is a great calm upon their spirits. They are past the rocks and out of the danger they feared, even when they are in the greatest danger of approaching death.

It was generally observed among us that God’s people who died of the plague along with the rest died with such peace and comfort as Christians do not ordinarily reach, except when they are called to suffer martyrdom for the testimony of Jesus Christ. Some who were full of doubts and fears and complaints while they lived and were well have been filled with assurance and comfort and praise and joyful expectation of glory when they have lain on their deathbeds with this disease. And not only more mature Christians, who were riper for glory, have had these comforts, but also some younger Christians whose acquaintance with the Lord was of no long standing.

I can speak of some of this from my own knowledge, concerning friends I was with. I will give only one instance: the house where I lived. We were eight in the household: three men, three youths, an old woman, and a maid. All of them had come to me when they heard that I was staying in town, some to keep me company, others to help me. It was the latter end of September before any of us was touched. The young ones were not idle. They made good use of their time in praying and hearing, and they were ready to receive instruction. They were strangely held up against the fear of the disease and of death, though death was so familiar a sight every day.

But at last we were visited, and the Plague came in upon us dreadfully. The cup was put into our hand to drink, after a neighboring family had tasted it, a family with whom we had enjoyed much sweet fellowship in this time of sorrow. Our maid was struck first. It began with a shivering and trembling in her flesh, and it quickly seized on her spirits. It was a sad day, and I believe I shall never forget it. I had been out to see a friend in the City whose husband had just died of the Plague, and she herself was infected with it. On my way back I went to see another, whose wife was dead of the Plague, and who expected that he himself would die within a few hours. I came home, and the maid was on her deathbed, and another of the household was crying out for help, left alone in a sweating, fainting fit. What was an interest in Christ worth then? What a privilege it was then to have a title to the kingdom of heaven!

But I go on. It was on Monday that the maid was struck. On Thursday she died, full of tokens. On Friday one of the youths had a swelling in his groin, and on the Lord’s Day he died with the marks of the disease upon him. On the same day another youth fell sick, and on the Wednesday following he died. On Thursday night his master fell sick of the disease, and within a day or two he was full of spots. But strangely, beyond his own expectation and everyone else’s, he recovered. So the Plague followed us and came upon us one by one. As Job’s messengers came one upon the heels of another, so the messengers of death came so close one after another, and in such a dreadful manner, that it seemed we must all follow one another straight into the pit. Yet the Lord in mercy put a stop to it, and the rest were preserved.

But what was most remarkable in this visitation was the behavior of the youths who died. I believe they were less troubled themselves than others were troubled for them. The first youth to be infected was asked by his father what provision he had made for his death and eternity. He told him that he hoped that, if he died, he would go to heaven. Asked the grounds of his hope, he said that the Lord had enabled him to look beyond the world. When he was drawing near his end, he boldly asked whether the tokens had appeared yet, saying that he was ready for them. And so a hopeful bud was nipped. But let not his father or mother weep and be sad for him. He is, I do not doubt, with their Father and his heavenly Father, and that may be their comfort.

The other was also a very sweet and hopeful youth, so loving and so good-natured that he could not help drawing love from all who knew him. But the grace he had gained at his age (he was, I suppose, under seventeen) adorned him above everything else and served him best of all. In his sickness he had great quiet and serenity of spirit, and he lay so untroubled at the thought of approaching death that I confess I marveled to see it. The sting and fear of death were strangely taken away by the hope he had of future glory.

Yet once he told his mother that he could wish to live a little longer, if it were the will of God. She asked him why he wished it. He told her he wished to live until the time of fire and stake came, for above all he longed to die a martyr. She said that if he died now he would have a crown. He answered that if he died a martyr he would have a more glorious crown. Yet he was not unwilling to receive his crown at once, and he went away to his Father’s house with great peace and sweetness in his looks. I could not blame his mother for grieving at the loss of such an only son, but that her grief was so excessive was not right. Now, I am sure, it is time to dry her tears and lay aside her sorrow for the loss of him who has been filled so long with joys in the heavenly mansions.

I might also speak of how the master behaved in his sickness, when he expected to die. When the spots appeared on his body, he sent for me and asked me to pray with him. He told me he was now going home. He asked me to write to his friends and let them know that he did not regret staying in the City, even though they had pressed him so urgently to come away. He had found so much of God’s presence while living here that he had no reason to regret it. He told me where he wanted to be buried, and asked me to preach his funeral sermon on the text “In thy presence there is fullness of joy; and at thy right hand there is pleasures for evermore” (Ps 16:11). But the Lord raised him up again, beyond the expectation of himself, his friends, and his physician. Let him not forget God’s mercies, nor let too much worldly business crowd in upon him and choke the remembrance and sense of God’s goodness, which was so singular. Rather, let him show by his singular meekness, humility, self-denial, love, zeal, and holy walk that the Lord has been singularly gracious to him.

But while I speak of matters at home, I must not forget to look abroad. The Plague now increases exceedingly. There are fears among us that before long there will not be enough people left alive to bury the dead, and that the City of London will now be entirely emptied of its people by this Plague.

Now some ministers who had earlier been put out of their places stayed on in the City, when most of the ministers who held places had fled into the country and gone away from the people as well as from the disease. These ministers saw the people crowding so fast into the grave and into eternity, and the people seemed to cry out as they went for physicians of the soul. They saw that the churches were open and the pulpits were open, and they found pamphlets flung about the streets advertising pulpits to let. So they judged that the law of God and of nature now released them from the prohibition, and indeed commanded them to preach in public places, even though the law of man forbade them to do it (that law, it is to be supposed, being meant for ordinary cases).

Suppose there had been a law that no one should practice medicine in the City except those licensed by the College of Physicians. And suppose that most of those licensed physicians, when they were needed most, in the time of the Plague, had retired into the country, while other physicians, just as skilled in medicine but without a license, had stayed among the sick. Surely no one would have judged it a breach of the law, in so extraordinary a case, for these unlicensed physicians to try by their practice to save the lives of those who could be cured by good care and medicine. In fact, they could hardly have cleared themselves of the guilt of murdering many bodies if, in such a case of necessity, they had neglected to give medicine over a technicality of law.

The case was the same with the unlicensed ministers who stayed when so many of the licensed ones were gone. And the need of souls was greater than the need of bodies, since the sickness of the soul was more universal and more dangerous than the sickness of the body, and the saving or losing of the soul is so many degrees beyond the preservation or death of the body. So the obligation upon these ministers was stronger and the motive to preach greater. For them to have incurred the guilt of soul-murder, by neglecting to give the medicine of the soul, would have been more heinous and more impossible to answer for. That they were called by the Lord into public ministry, I suppose few serious people will deny, since the Lord so eminently owned them by giving them many seals of their ministry.

Now they are preaching, and every sermon was to them as if they were preaching their last. Old Time seems now to stand at the head of the pulpit with his great scythe, saying in a hoarse voice, “Work while it is called today; at night I will mow you down.” Grim Death seems to stand at the side of the pulpit with his sharp arrow, saying, “You shoot God’s arrows, and I will shoot mine.” The Grave seems to lie open at the foot of the pulpit, with dust in her bosom, saying:

Louden your cry
To God,
To men,
And now fulfill your trust:
Here you must lie,
Mouth stopped,
Breath gone,
And silent in the dust.

Ministers now had awakening calls to seriousness and fervor in their ministerial work. To preach at the side and brink of the pit into which thousands were tumbling, and to pray with so near a view of eternity, into which many travelers were entering every day, might well stir up the spirit more than ordinary.

Now there is such a vast crowd of people in the churches where these ministers are to be found that many times the ministers cannot get near the pulpit doors for the press, and are forced to climb over the pews to reach them. And such a face is now seen in the congregations as was seldom seen before in London: such eager looks, such open ears, such greedy attention, as if they would devour every word that dropped from the ministers’ mouths.

If you have ever seen a drowning man catch at a rope, you may guess how eagerly many people caught at the Word. They were ready to be overwhelmed by this overflowing scourge that was passing through the City. Death was knocking at so many doors, and God was crying aloud by his judgments, and ministers were now sent to knock, to cry aloud, and to lift up their voice like a trumpet. Then, then the people began to open the ear and the heart that had been fast shut and barred before. How they listened then, as if for their lives! They listened as if every sermon were their last; as if death stood at the church door and would seize them as soon as they came out; as if the arrows that flew so thick in the City would strike them before they could get home; as if they were about to appear at once before the bar of that God who was now speaking to them by his ministers.

Great were the impressions that the Word then made upon many hearts, beyond the power of man to produce, and beyond anything the people had ever felt before, as some of them have declared. When sin is ripped open and reproved, oh, the tears that slide down from their eyes! When the judgments of God are pronounced, oh, the tremblings that come upon the conscience! When the Lord Jesus Christ is made known and offered, oh, the longing desires and the opening of hearts to him! When the riches of the gospel are displayed, and the promises of the covenant of grace are set forth and applied, oh, the inward burnings and sweet flames that were kindled in the affections!

Now the net is cast, and many fish are taken. The pool is stirred by the angel, and many leprous spirits and sin-sick souls are cured. Many were brought to the birth, and I hope not a few were born again and brought forth. There was a strange stirring upon the hearts of multitudes in the City, and I am persuaded that many were brought over effectually to close with Jesus Christ. Some of these died of the Plague with willingness and peace; others remain steadfast in God’s ways to this day. Convictions, I believe, many hundreds had, if not thousands. I wish that none of them have stifled those convictions and, with the dog, returned to their vomit, or with the sow, wallowed again in the mire of their former sins. The work was all the greater because the instruments used were more obscure and unlikely. The Lord chose them for that very reason, so that ministers and people alike might ascribe the glory in full to himself.

About the time these ministers began preaching, and especially after their first fast together, the Lord begins to relent, to turn back his hand, and to bring some abatement of the disease.

From 7,165 who died of the Plague in one week, there is a decrease to 5,538 the next, which was at the latter end of September. The next week there was a further decrease to 4,929; the next to 4,327; the next to 2,665; the next to 1,421; the next to 1,021. Then there was an increase in the first week of November to 1,414. But it fell the week after to 1,050, and the week after to 652, and the week after that to 333, and so it lessened more and more to the end of the year. By then we had a bill of 97,306 who had died of all diseases, an increase of more than 79,000 over the year before. The number who died of the Plague was reckoned at 68,596 this year, whereas the bill speaks of only 6 who died of it the year before.

Now the citizens who had scattered into the country because of the contagion think of their old houses and trades and begin to return, though with fear and trembling, in case some of the after-drops of the storm should fall on them. And oh, that many of them had not brought back the old hearts and sins they had carried away with them! Oh, that there had been a general repentance, a reformation, and a returning to the Lord who had struck the City! The Lord gave them leisure and a vacation from their trades for the one necessary thing. Had they made good use of it, and generally mourned for the sin that brought the Plague upon the City, and had they humbly and earnestly sought the Lord to turn from the fierce anger kindled against London, it might have prevented the desolating judgment by fire. But alas! How many spent their time of leisure on toys and trifles, or at best on feeding and preserving their bodies, but gave no time to serious thought about the salvation of their souls!

And if some were a little awakened by fear while the Plague raged so greatly and they saw themselves in such danger, yet when they judged the danger to be over, they fell more soundly asleep than before. They are still the same as before, or worse. Those who were drunken are drunken still; those who were filthy are filthy still; and those who were unjust and covetous still persist in their sinful course. Cheating and lying, swearing and cursing, Sabbath-breaking, pride, envy, flesh-pleasing, and similar God-displeasing and God-provoking sins (of which I will speak in the catalogue of London’s sins) abound in London, as if God’s judgments by the Plague meant nothing at all.

Some return to their houses and follow their worldly business, working as hard as they can to make up the time they have lost, without taking care or making any effort to profit by the judgment and by God’s wonderful preservation of them. Others return and sin as hard as they can, since for a while they had been kept from the opportunities and free liberty to sin that they had before. Most now began to settle down at rest in their houses when summer came and the Plague did not return. Now they bring back all the goods they had carried into the country because of the Plague. They did not imagine they would be forced to move them again so soon.

So much for the great Plague in London.

I now proceed to give an account of the judgment of the Fire. Here I will be briefer, since the Fire did its work in fewer days than the Plague did in months.

It was on the second of September, 1666, that the anger of the Lord was kindled against London and the Fire began. It began in a baker’s house in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street Hill. And now the Lord is making London “like a fiery oven in the time of his anger” (Ps 21:9), and in his wrath he devours and swallows up our homes. It was in the depth and dead of the night, when most doors and senses in the City were locked up, that the Fire breaks out and shows itself abroad. Like a mighty giant refreshed with wine, it wakes and arms itself and quickly gathers strength. Having made havoc of some houses, it rushes down the hill toward the Bridge, crosses Thames Street, and invades St. Magnus Church at the foot of the Bridge. Great as that church was, it was no sufficient barricade against this conqueror. Having scaled and taken this fort, the Fire shoots its flames with all the greater advantage into every place around it, and a great row of houses on the Bridge is quickly thrown to the ground. Then the conqueror, checked in its course at the Bridge, marches back toward the City again and runs westward along Thames Street with great noise and violence. There, with so much combustible matter in its teeth and so fierce a wind at its back, it prevails with little resistance, to the astonishment of all who watched.

My business is not to speak of the hand of man, which was used in starting and carrying on this Fire. That the Fire began at such a time, after so much hot weather had dried the houses and made them all the fitter for fuel; that it began in such a place, where there were so many timber houses and the shops were filled with so much combustible matter; and that it began just when the wind was blowing so fiercely from that corner toward the rest of the City, which was then like tinder to the sparks: all this smells of a popish design, hatched in the same place where the Gunpowder Plot was contrived, only this one was more successful.

The world knows well enough how agreeable this is to popish principles and practices. Those who could intend to blow up King and Parliament with gunpowder might actually burn a heretical city (as they count it) to ashes, without any scruple of their kind of conscience. For besides the dispensations they can obtain from his Holiness, or rather his Wickedness, the Pope, for the most horrid crimes of murder, incest, and the like, it is not unlikely that they count such an action as this meritorious (in their kind of merit). In the end they will find that it merits the flames of eternal fire instead of a crown of glory, though I wonder that, in their way, they can have the least hope of such a crown. I believe the people will now take more heed of them and their ways. Instead of advancing their cause, I hope the opposite effect has been produced, and that the former indifference of a newly risen generation, who did not know them, is now turned into loathing and detestation of a religion that can allow such practices. My work is not to declare what has been proved against the papists before the Honorable Committee of Parliament appointed to inquire into their insolences, nor the evidence that has been given concerning the Fire and who were accessories to it.

No, I would rather try to turn people’s eyes from men to God. For whoever the instruments were, God was the author of this evil that has come upon us, since there is no evil in the City (that is, evil of punishment) which the Lord, as the righteous and supreme Judge, does not inflict. And surely more of the extraordinary hand of God than of any men appeared in the burning of the City of London. God could have forestalled men by exposing their plots before they took effect, as he did that of the Gunpowder Treason. God could have directed the means of quenching the Fire when it was first kindled, and given them his blessing. God, who holds the winds in his fist, could have gathered in the wind and laid it asleep, or turned it the other way so that it would have been a defense to the City. Or God, who has the clouds at his command and the bottles of heaven in his hand, could have gathered his thick clouds together and squeezed them, opened his bottles, and poured down rain in abundance on the City. Then, even if the wind had blown as it did, it would have blown water onto the fire, which would quickly have put it out.

But at that time the heavens were brass, and no showering clouds were to be seen. The Fire begins and is quickly noticed, though in the middle of the night. “Fire, fire, fire!” resounds through the streets. Many citizens start out of their sleep and look out of their windows; some dress and run to the place. The Lord Mayor of the City comes with his officers. There is confusion; counsel is taken away; and London, so famous for wisdom and skill, can now find neither brains nor hands to prevent its ruin. The hand of God was in it. The decree had gone forth: London must now fall, and who could prevent it? No wonder the building tumbles when so many pillars are removed. The prayers, tears, and faith that London once had might have quenched the violence of the fire; they might have opened heaven for rain and driven back the wind. But now the fire gets the mastery and burns dreadfully. God blows upon it with his great bellows, which makes it spread quickly and go on with such force and rage, overturning everything so furiously, that the whole City is brought into danger of desolation.

That night most Londoners had taken their last sleep in their houses. They little thought it would be so when they went to bed. They did not in the least suspect that, when the doors of their ears were unlocked and the casements of their eyes opened in the morning, they would hear of such an enemy invading the City, and would see him enter the doors of their houses with such fury, break into every room, and look out of their windows with so threatening a countenance. As it is said in Lamentations 4:12, “The inhabitants would not have believed that the adversary should have entered the gates of Jerusalem.” So the inhabitants of the City would not have believed that the Fire could have entered and prevailed to burn London to the ground.

What made the ruin all the more dismal was that it began on the Lord’s Day morning. There was never such a Sabbath in London. Some churches were in flames that day, and God seemed to come down and preach himself in them, as he did on Mount Sinai when the mountain burned with fire. Those churches never had such warm preaching; such lightning, dreadful sermons were never delivered in London before. In other churches ministers were preaching their farewell sermons, and the people were listening with quaking and astonishment. Instead of the holy rest that Christians have taken on this day, there was a tumultuous hurrying through the streets toward the place that was burning. And there was a still more tumultuous hurrying in the spirits of those who sat still and knew only by report how quickly and strangely the Fire was spreading.

Now the trained bands are up in arms, watching every quarter for foreigners, because of the general fears and suspicions, and the rumors that several of them were throwing fireballs into houses to help on and provoke the already too furious flames. Now goods are hastily removed from the lower parts of the City, and the body of the people begin to withdraw and move uphill, as the people did from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram when the earth split apart and swallowed them up (Num 16:27, 31-32); or rather as Lot drew out of his house in Sodom before it was consumed by fire from heaven (Gen 19). Yet on the Lord’s Day some hope remained that the Fire would be put out, especially among those who lived in the remote parts. They could hardly imagine that a fire a mile off would be able to reach their houses.

But the evening comes on, and now the Fire is more visible and dreadful. Instead of the black curtains of night that used to be spread over the City, the curtains now are yellow. The smoke rising from the burning parts looked like so much flame in the night, and as the wind blew it over the other parts, the whole City, seen from some distance, seemed to be on fire. Now hopes begin to sink, and a general dismay seizes people’s spirits. Little sleep is taken in London this night: the amazement that the eye and ear work upon the spirit either dries up or drives away the vapor that usually binds up the senses.

Some are at work to quench the fire with water; others try to stop its course by pulling down houses; but all to no purpose. If it is a little abated, or beaten down, or brought to a stand in some places, it is only for a very short while. It quickly regroups and recovers its force. It leaps and mounts and makes a more furious onset, drives back its opponents, snatches their weapons out of their hands, seizes on the waterhouses and engines, burns them, ruins them, and makes them unfit for service.

Some are on their knees in the night, pouring out tears before the Lord and interceding for poor London in the day of its calamity. But alas, I fear there are too few weeping Jeremiahs at the throne of grace, too few Moseses to stand in the gap, too few Jacobs to wrestle with the Lord and hang upon his arm. London’s sins were too great, and God’s anger against the City too hot, to be so easily and immediately quenched and abated. And if by the intercession of some a mitigation is obtained, so that the Lord does not stir up all his wrath to destroy the place utterly, as he did Sodom and Gomorrah, still no one can prevail to call back that wrath and reverse the decree that has gone forth against the City. The time of London’s fall has come. The Fire has received its commission from God to burn down the City, and therefore every attempt to hinder it is in vain.

By Lord’s Day night the Fire had run as far as Garlickhythe in Thames Street, had crept up into Cannon Street and leveled it with the ground, and was still pressing forward along the waterside and upward to the brow of the hill on which the City was built.

On Monday Gracechurch Street is all in flames, with Lombard Street on the left hand and part of Fenchurch Street on the right, the Fire working that way against the wind, though not so fast. Before it were pleasant and stately houses; behind it, ruinous and desolate heaps. The burning was then in the shape of a bow. A dreadful bow it was, such as my eyes had never seen before, a bow that had God’s arrow in it with a flaming point. It was a shining bow, but not like the one in the cloud, which brings water with it and also signified God’s covenant not to destroy the world any more with water. This was a bow that had fire in it, which signified God’s anger and his intention to destroy London with fire.

Now the flames break in upon Cornhill, that large and spacious street, and quickly cross the way by the trail of timber left lying in the street, which had been pulled down from houses to keep the fire from spreading. And so they lick up the whole street as they go. They mount to the tops of the highest houses; they descend to the bottoms of the lowest vaults and cellars; and they march along both sides of the way with such a roaring noise as was never heard in the City of London. No stately building is great enough to resist their fury. The Royal Exchange itself, the glory of the merchants, is now invaded with great violence. Once the fire had entered, how quickly it ran around the galleries, filling them with flames! Then it came down the stairs, surrounded the walks, giving out flaming volleys, and filled the court with sheets of fire. Soon all the statues of the kings fell down on their faces, and the greater part of the stone building after them (the founder’s statue alone remaining), with a noise that was dreadful and astonishing.

Then, then the City shook indeed. The inhabitants trembled and fled from their houses in great amazement, lest the flames should devour them. Rattle, rattle, rattle was the noise the Fire struck upon the ear all around, as if a thousand iron chariots were beating upon the stones. And if you turned your eye to the openings of the streets where the Fire had come, you might see in some places whole streets in flames at once. The flames issued from the windows on either side as if from so many great forges, and folding together, they were united into one great flame throughout the whole street. And then you might see the houses tumble, tumble, tumble from one end of the street to the other with a great crash, leaving their foundations open to the view of the heavens.

Now fear and terror surprise the citizens of London; confusion and astonishment fall upon them at this unheard-of, unthought-of judgment. It would have grieved the heart of even an unconcerned person to see the rueful looks, the pale cheeks, the tears trickling down from the eyes (where the greatness of sorrow and amazement allowed such a vent), the beating of the breast, the wringing of the hands. It would have grieved him to hear the sighs and groans, the doleful and weeping speeches of the distressed citizens, as they brought their wives (some from childbed) and their little ones (some from their sickbeds) out of their houses, and sent them into the country, or somewhere into the fields with their goods.

Now the hopes of London are gone; their heart has sunk. Now there is a general removal from the City, and in a greater hurry than before the Plague, since their goods were in greater danger from the Fire than their persons had been from the sickness. Some had scarcely returned before they had to remove again, and not as before: now without any hope of ever returning and living in those houses again.

Now carts and drays and coaches and horses, as many as could get into the City, were loaded, and any money was given for help: £5, £10, £20, £30 for a cart to carry out into the fields some choice things that were about to be consumed. And some of the country people had the conscience to accept the highest price that the citizens offered in their extremity. I am mistaken if such money does not burn worse than the Fire out of which it was raked. Now casks of wine and oil and other goods are tumbled along, and the owners shove as much of their goods as they can toward the gate. Everyone now becomes his own porter, and there is scarcely a back of man or woman with any strength in it that does not carry a burden in the streets. It was very sad to see such throngs of poor citizens coming in and going out from the unburned parts, heavily loaded with some pieces of their goods, but more heavily loaded with the weight of grief and sorrow of heart, so that it is a wonder they did not sink altogether under these burdens.

Monday night was a dreadful night. When the wings of night had overshadowed the light of the heavenly bodies, there was no darkness of night in London, for the Fire now shines all around with a fearful blaze, which gave such light in the streets as if it had been the sun at noonday. Now the Fire, having worked strangely backward against the wind to Billingsgate and beyond, along Thames Street eastward, runs up the hill to Tower Street. Having marched on from Gracechurch Street, it makes further progress in Fenchurch Street. And having spread its wing beyond Queenhithe in Thames Street westward, it mounts up from the waterside through Dowgate and Old Fish Street into Watling Street.

But the great fury of the Fire was in the broader streets. In the middle of the night it had come down Cornhill and laid it in the dust, and it runs along by the Stocks. There it meets another fire, which came down Threadneedle Street; a little further on, another, which came up from Walbrook; a little further still, another, which comes up from Bucklersbury. All four of these join together and break into one great flame at the corner of Cheapside, with such dazzling light, burning heat, and roaring noise from the fall of so many houses together that it was truly amazing. And though it was somewhat stopped in its swift course at Mercers’ Chapel, after a while it conquers the place with great force, burns through it, and then proceeds with great rage along Cheapside.

On Tuesday the Fire was burning up the very bowels of London. Cheapside is all ablaze within a few hours, many fires meeting there as at a center. From Soper Lane, Bow Lane, Bread Street, Friday Street, and Old Change the Fire comes up almost together and breaks furiously into the broad street, and most of that side of the way was in flames together: a dreadful spectacle! Then, partly by the fire that came down by Mercers’ Chapel and partly by the fall of the houses across the way, the other side is quickly kindled and does not stand long after it.

Now the Fire gets into Blackfriars, and so continues its course along the water and makes up toward St. Paul’s Church on that side, while the Cheapside fire besets the great building on this side. Though the church was all of stone outside, though it was bare of houses around it, and though it stood so high above all the buildings in the City, yet within a while it yields to the violent assaults of the conquering flames and strangely takes fire at the top. Now the lead melts and runs down as if it were snow before the sun. The great beams and massive stones fall with a great noise on the pavement and break through into St. Faith’s Church underneath. Now great flakes of stone scale and peel off strangely from the sides of the walls.

Having taken this high fort, the conqueror darts its flames all around. Now Paternoster Row, Newgate Market, the Old Bailey, and Ludgate Hill have submitted to the devouring Fire, which rushes down the hill into Fleet Street with wonderful speed. Now the Cheapside fire marches along Ironmonger Lane, Old Jewry, Lawrence Lane, Milk Street, Wood Street, Gutter Lane, and Foster Lane. Now it runs along Lothbury, Cateaton Street, and the rest. From Newgate Market it assaults Christ Church, conquers that great building, and burns through Martin’s Lane toward Aldersgate, and everywhere around so furiously, as if it would not leave a house standing on the ground.

Now horrible flakes of fire mount up into the sky, and the yellow smoke of London ascends toward heaven like the smoke of a great furnace. The smoke was so great that it darkened the sun at noonday; if at any time the sun peeped out, it looked red like blood. The cloud of smoke was so great that travelers rode at noon for some miles together in its shadow, though there was no other cloud to be seen in the sky.

And if Monday night was dreadful, Tuesday night was more dreadful still, when by far the greatest part of the City was consumed. Many thousands who on Saturday had comfortable houses in the City, both for themselves and for entertaining others, now have nowhere to lay their heads. The fields are the only refuge they can find for themselves and their goods. Most of the late inhabitants of London lie all night in the open air, with no other canopy over them but the heavens. The fire is still making toward them and threatens the suburbs. It was amazing to see how it had spread itself several miles around. Among other things that night, the sight of Guildhall was a fearful spectacle. After the fire had taken it, its whole body stood together in view for several hours without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oak), a bright shining coal, as if it had been a palace of gold or a great building of burnished brass.

On Wednesday morning people expected that the suburbs would be burned as well as the City, and were hastily preparing their flight, as well as they could, with their luggage into the country and the neighboring villages. Then the Lord has pity on poor London. In compassion he begins to relent; his heart is turned within him; and he “stays his rough wind in the day of the east wind” (Isa 27:8). His fury begins to abate. He has a remnant of people in London, and a remnant of houses shall escape there. The wind is now hushed. The Fire’s commission is being withdrawn, and it burns so gently, even where it meets no opposition, that in many places a few hands could put it out without difficulty. Now the citizens begin to take a little heart and encouragement in their efforts to quench the Fire.

It met a check at Leadenhall, from that great building; it was stopped in Bishopsgate Street, Fenchurch Street, Lime Street, Mark Lane, and toward the Tower. One means, under God, was blowing up houses with gunpowder. Now it is stayed in Lothbury, Broad Street, and Coleman Street. Toward the gates it burned, but without any great violence. At the Temple too it is stayed, and in Holborn, where it had gained no great footing. Once the fire was brought under, it was kept under, and on Thursday the flames were put out.

But on Wednesday night, when the people lately of London, now of the fields, hoped to get a little rest on the ground where they had spread their beds, a more dreadful fear fell upon them than any they had felt before. A rumor spread that the French were coming armed against them to cut their throats and rob them of what they had saved out of the Fire. They were now naked and weak, in poor condition to defend themselves, and hearts, especially the women’s, quaked and trembled and were ready to die within them. Yet many citizens, having lost their houses and almost all they had, were fired with rage and fury. They began to rouse themselves like lions, or like bears robbed of their cubs, and now “Arm, arm, arm!” resounded through the fields and suburbs with a dreadful voice. We may guess at the distress and perplexity of the people this night, which was somewhat relieved when the alarm was found to be false.

Thus fell great London, that ancient city! that populous city! London, which was the queen city of the land, and as famous as most cities in the world; none so famous for the gospel and the zealous profession of the Reformed religion. And yet how has London vanished like smoke, and her glory been laid in the dust? How has her destruction come, which no one thought of, and her desolation in a moment? How the nations around gaze and wonder! How the whole land trembles at the noise of her fall! How her citizens droop and hang their heads, and her women and virgins weep and sit in the dust!

Oh, the paleness that now sits upon the cheeks! the astonishment and confusion that cover the face! the dismal fears that arise in the minds of most concerning the dreadful consequences likely to follow from this fall of London! How the pride of London is stained and her beauty spoiled! her arm broken and her strength departed! her riches almost gone and her treasures so greatly consumed! The head now is sick and the whole body faint; the heart is wounded, and every other part feels its stroke. England was never in greater danger of becoming the prey of a foreign power than since the burning and fall of this City, which held the strength and treasure of the nation. How has London ceased, that rich city! that joyous city! One corner indeed is left, but more houses than the whole number that stood within the walls have been turned to ashes.

The merchants have now left the Royal Exchange; the buyers and sellers have forsaken the streets. Gracechurch Street, Cornhill, Cheapside, Newgate Market, and similar places, which used to be thronged with traders, have now become empty of inhabitants; and instead of the stately houses that stood there last summer, they lie this winter in ruinous heaps. The glory of London has now flown away like a bird. The trade of London is shattered and broken to pieces. Her delights too have vanished and her pleasant things are laid waste. Now there is no chanting to the sound of the viol, and no dancing to the sweet music of other instruments; no drinking wine in bowls, and stretching out on beds of lust; no excess of wine and banqueting; no feasts in halls and fine dishes; no amorous looks and wanton dalliance; no rustling silks and costly dresses. These things are at an end in that place.

If only houses of sin had sunk, and only fuel for lust had been consumed, it would not be so much. But the houses of God’s worship also are now devoured by the flames, though formerly they were a bulwark against the fire, partly through the walls around them and partly through the fervent prayers within them. And the homes of many who truly fear God have not escaped. In the places where God has been served and his servants have lived, nettles are now growing, owls are screeching, thieves and cutthroats are lurking. There is a sad face now on the ruined part of London. And terrible has the voice of the Lord been, crying, yes, roaring in the City by these dreadful judgments of the Plague and the Fire which he has brought upon us.

Thus you have the narrative of the judgments themselves.

2. Concerning the cause of these judgments: why has the Lord spoken by such terrible things in the City of London?

In giving an account of this, I will make use of the second doctrine drawn from the text:

When God speaks most terribly, he answers most righteously.

These are God’s judgments, and therefore they must be righteous judgments. Can there be unrighteousness in God? No, by no means; for then how could he be God? How then could he judge the world (Rom 3:5-6)? “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Rom 3:4). Let God be righteous, and all the world unrighteous. Light could more easily depart from the sun, and heat be separated from fire, and the whole creation could more easily drop into nothing, than God could cease to be just and righteous in the severest judgments he inflicts on the children of men.

Some profane mockers may answer back against God and cast reflections on his righteousness and his goodness toward his own people, because these judgments have fallen so heavily on London, the glory of the land, yes, of the world, for the number of godly people (as they mockingly call them) who live in it. If God were so righteous and so favorable to the godly, they ask, would he have bent his bow and shot so many arrows among them, as he did in the visitation of the plague, while he allowed so many notoriously wicked people to escape? Would he send the fire to consume so many homes of the godly, while the houses of the most vicious and vile were preserved? I will labor to stop the mouths of those who are so ready to open them against the King of heaven, by setting the following particulars before you to consider.

1. God’s way is sometimes in the sea, and his paths in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known (Ps 77:19). His judgments are unsearchable, and his ways past finding out (Rom 11:33). And even then he is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works (Ps 145:17). When clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne (Ps 97:2). And when his judgments are a great deep, his righteousness is like the great mountains (Ps 36:6).

We do not understand all the mysteries of nature, nor are we acquainted with all the mysteries of state. So if there are some mysteries in God’s way of governing the world and distributing temporal mercies and judgments, where we do not grasp the meaning of everything and cannot fully trace God’s righteousness and goodness, let us say it is because our eyes are shut and we are covered with darkness. Then let us shut our mouths too, and seal our lips with silence, not daring in the least to utter anything that might detract from these attributes of God, which are as inviolable and unchangeable as his very being. This much might be said even if the reason were more hidden than it is.

2. But the reason for God’s judgments, and his righteousness in them, together with how his goodness toward his own people is preserved in them, may be understood if we consider the following.

(1) These judgments of plague and fire are both national judgments.

[1] The judgment of the plague was national, inasmuch as London was the chief city, the king’s court was here, most parts of the country had relatives here, and every part of the country had interests here. Moreover, the plague was not only in London and Westminster and the places nearby; it spread into the countryside at a greater distance, to Cambridge, Norwich, Colchester and other towns, where it raged either the same year or the next, proportionally as much as it did in London.

[2] The judgment of the fire burned down only the City and left Westminster and the suburbs standing, and it did not reach into the country. Yet it was a national judgment, because London was the metropolis of the land, and the beauty, riches, strength and glory of the whole kingdom lay in London. Nor was it the inhabitants of the City alone who suffered by this fire; the whole land, more or less, feels and will feel its sting.

(2) These judgments, then, being national, it is not unreasonable to say that national sins have caused them. If so, we may readily find a reason for God’s righteousness in these proceedings, since the sins of the land are so obvious and so heinous. Anyone who does not know how wickedness has abounded in these later years is a great stranger in England. His eyes must be shut tight if he does not see what a deluge of profaneness and impiety has broken in like a mighty torrent and overflowed the land, or if he has not noticed the barefaced villainies committed among us, such that it is a great question whether any earlier age could match them. We read in Scripture of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of the wickedness of Jerusalem in its time. Secular histories and travelers mention Rome, Venice, Naples, Paris and other places as very wicked. But who can equal England, which calls itself Christian and Protestant, for the desperate and audacious affronts and indignities that the gallants (as they are called) of our times have offered to the highest Majesty?

How hell, as it were, broke loose! How much worse men were than those in our Savior’s time who were possessed with devils, who cut themselves with stones and tore their own flesh! Such men went about like so many hellhounds and devils in the flesh, cursing and damning, swearing and blaspheming, inventing new oaths and glorying in them, delighting to tear the name of God and to spit their rancor and malice in his very face. Can we then be at a loss for a reason for God’s righteousness in punishing England in this way, beginning so furiously with London?

There were so many atheists around London and in the land who denied the very being of God. So many gentlemen walked our streets who regarded it as part of their good breeding to cast off every sense of a Deity, and no arguments could bring them to be persuaded that God truly exists. Should we wonder, then, if the Lord appears in a terrible way, so that he may be known by the judgments he executes? So many denied the divine authority of the Scriptures, the very foundation of our Christian faith, and by their principles counted themselves among Turks, pagans and other infidels, however much they called themselves Christians; and in this way they put such an affront on the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of the most high God. Is it strange that the Lord should speak so terribly to show his indignation?

There was such blowing at that light which would show men the way to heaven, and such efforts to put it out; such hatred of the power of godliness, and such opposition to it. The name of saint was a matter of derision and scorn. There was such wallowing in filthy fornication and adultery, in swinish drunkenness and intemperance. Such oppression and bribery, such malice and cruelty, such unheard-of wickedness and hideous impiety had grown to such a height in the land. May we not reasonably think, then, that those who were guilty of these things, being in the ship, were a great cause of the storm of God’s anger that has made such a shipwreck?

The plague, indeed, once it had come, made little distinction between the bodies of the righteous and the bodies of the wicked. Neither does grace. The difference is more inward and deep. It is the soul that begins to be glorified by grace, and has the seed of eternal life put into it, when it passes through the new birth. But the body is not changed along with the soul. The body remains as it was, as frail and weak and exposed to disease and death as before, and as the body of any wicked person. And so, when the infectious disease of the plague came into a populous city, the bodies of the righteous, along with the rest, caught the contagion, and they fell in the common calamity. There is a difference in the manner of their death, and a difference in their place and state after death, as I have already said, but the kind of death is the same.

In the same way the fire makes no distinction between the houses of the godly and the houses of the ungodly. They are all made of the same combustible material, and they catch fire one from another, as infected bodies do. The godly, indeed, have God for their dwelling place, and they are citizens of the new Jerusalem which is above, a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, an abiding city which the fire cannot reach; and their persons are secured from the flames of eternal fire in hell. But they have no promise or security that their houses will be preserved from fire here in this world. Once the judgments of plague and fire are sent, they work according to their nature, without singling out the righteous.

But let us inquire further into the reason why the plague was sent last year, and such a plague as had not been known for forty years, which raged so severely when there was no sultry weather (as in other years) to increase it; and why the fire was sent this year, and such a fire as neither we nor our forefathers ever knew, nor do we read in any history of one so great in any place in time of peace. What shall we say caused these extraordinary national judgments, but extraordinary national sins? It was an extraordinary hand of God that brought the plague. No natural cause can be given why it should be so much greater that year than in former years, except that sin had grown to a greater height. And that a fire should prevail against every attempt to quench it and burn down the City, with that judgment following hard on the heels of the other: what reason can be given, except that England’s sins and God’s displeasure have been extraordinary? God is a God of patience, and it is no light thing that will move him. He is slow to anger, so it must be some great provocation that makes him so furious. He is highly offended before he lifts up his hand, and exceedingly incensed before his anger breaks out into such a flame. For my part, I truly believe that if it had not been for the crying abominations of the times (which are not to be confined chiefly to the City of London), and if England had made use of the means God prescribes according to the rule of his Word, as England once could, both plague and fire would have been prevented.

3. Moreover, it may be said that some particular persons in the City, by some more peculiar and notorious sins, may have provoked the Lord to bring punishment on the whole place, even if the land had not been so generally profane and wicked. Even the heathen could say that a whole city may be punished for the wickedness of one man. Indeed, we read that when David, good man though he was, numbered the people (a small sin compared with the sins of some others in our days), God was provoked to send such a dreadful plague, not on David himself but on his people, that 70,000 men died of it in three days. And David said, “I have sinned and done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done?” (2 Sam 24:10-18).

4. If someone asks how God’s mercy to his people appears, when these judgments have fallen so heavily on many of them, I answer:

(1) Those of his own people who have fallen by the plague are received into greater grace and mercy in heaven than they were capable of here. Moreover, they are delivered from the evil to come, which has since come upon us and may come further.

(2) As for those whose houses have fallen by the fire, the Lord could make them greater gainers another way, and I am confident he has done so. They may have lost much in temporal things, but they are, or may be, gainers in spiritual things, which are of a higher and more excellent nature, provided they do not fail themselves. I have known and heard of many of God’s people whose houses were burned and goods spoiled who have taken the loss with such cheerfulness, humility, meekness, patience, contentment, and thankfulness that anything was saved, even if only their lives, that it has been my wonder and joy. To gain such a spirit holds more good than the loss of all outward comforts holds evil.

(3) Further, if these judgments have fallen on God’s people, we must recognize that they have their sins, which have deserved them. Possibly some have now begun to go along with the wicked in their wicked ways. It may be they had grown looser in their walk and more formal in the service of God, and their hearts more set on the world. (I will speak of these sins more fully when I come to the sins of the City.) And the sins of God’s people carry more heinous aggravations than the sins of the wicked, being committed against clearer light, dearer love, sweeter mercies and stronger obligations, and therefore they provoke God to wrath all the more. That is why he threatens his own people especially that he will punish them when they transgress: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, and therefore I will punish you for your iniquities” (Amos 3:2).

(4) Besides, they may need awakening judgments to rouse them and humble them for sin, and to loosen and wean them from the world; and it is in love and faithfulness that God inflicts such judgments on them.

(5) Lastly, we must remember that it is God’s usual course to begin with his own house: “Judgment begins at the house of God” (1 Pet 4:17).

5. To conclude: do any of the ungodly question God’s righteousness because they have so far survived and escaped these common calamities?

(1) That is a poor return and a poor use to make of the patience and goodness God has shown them, so that by it he might lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4-5).

(2) Let them wait a while, and God will answer them himself and convince them of his righteous judgments by their own experience: “If judgment begin at the house of God, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel? and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinners appear?” (1 Pet 4:17-18). We read of a cup of red wine in the hand of the Lord (Ps 75:8). He may give his people the top of it to drink, but the most bitter part, the dregs at the bottom, the wicked shall wring forth and drink. If God whips his children with rods, he will scourge his enemies with scorpions.

I am persuaded that the notoriously ungodly of this generation will not leave this world without some remarkable temporal judgment. And I am persuaded that the Lord will make them feel, even here, what an evil and bitter thing it is to fly so audaciously in the face of the great God by their hideous oaths and blasphemies and their horrid wickedness and abominations, by which they in effect challenge God to do his worst against them. When God draws his glittering sword and makes ready his sharp arrow on the string; when God clothes himself with fury as with a garment, and his hand takes hold on vengeance; when their iniquities are fully ripe, and the day of their visitation and recompense has come: how afraid these sinners of England will be then, and what amazing terror will seize this vile generation! “Can their hearts endure, or their hands be strong in the day that the Lord shall deal with them?” (Ezek 22:14). Then the Lord will roar from his holy habitation with such a terrible voice that it will make their ears tingle and their hearts quake and tremble. He will roar like a lion and tear them in pieces, when there is none to deliver. If the shaking of his rod has moved them, and the beginning of his judgments executed on others has frightened them, how will they behave when the scourge is laid on their own backs and judgment falls on their own heads?

Surely the judgments intended specifically for the most ungodly have not yet come. Yet as they are likely to be exceedingly great, because more pure and unmixed wrath will accompany them, so they are likely to be very near, because these sinners are filling up the measure of their wickedness so fast, and seem to have arrived at the very uttermost of sin. Surely their judgment neither lingers nor slumbers, but is on the wing, hastening toward them. Surely the arm of the Lord is awakened and lifted up on high. Infinite patience holds it up a little while, to test whether the judgments already executed on others before their eyes will have any good effect on them, so as to awaken them, stop them and turn them from their evil ways. Yet if they go on in their sinful course, I am persuaded his arm will come down on them with such force and fury that their destruction will be remarkable to all who are around them. I am much persuaded, too, that the Lord will, as it were, hang up in chains many of the villains of our times who have been guilty of such treachery and rebellion against the great King of heaven, and make their punishment here as notorious as their sins have been, so that the whole world may hear and fear and beware of such vile practices.

I suppose they do not expect it or fear it now, any more than the old world feared its drowning, or Sodom and Gomorrah their burning, because deceitful sin has hardened their hearts, and long custom in sin without punishment has seared their consciences as with a hot iron. But they are in the greatest danger when they sleep in the greatest complacency. When men grow desperately hardened against frequent reproofs, and indeed against all reproofs, by word and by rod too, what follows but sudden destruction and that without remedy (Prov 29:1)? “And when men cry peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape” (1 Thess 5:3).

And if some of this perverse and wicked generation slip away without a remarkable temporal destruction, God will make his righteousness evident to them in the other world. He will lock up their souls as close prisoners in the lowest dungeon of hell, appointing black devils to be their jailers, flames of fire to be their clothing, hideous terrors and woe to be their food, and Cain, Judas and other damned, tormented spirits to be their companions. There they must lie bound in chains of darkness until the judgment of the great day. And when the general assize has come, and the angels have blown the last trumpet and gathered the elect to the right hand of Christ, then the angels will be sent with the keys of the bottomless pit, and the prison will be opened for a while. Like so many criminals in chains, these sinners, together with all their fellow sinners, will be brought out and will find the dirty flesh of their bodies, which they will then put on like a filthy rag. With most rueful looks, trembling joints, horrible shrieks and inexpressible confusion and terror, they will see the Lord Jesus Christ, whom in their lifetime they despised and affronted, come down from heaven in flaming fire to take vengeance on them. He will sentence them to the flames of eternal fire and drive them from his throne and presence into outer darkness, where they must take up their lodging forevermore. Then, then there will be a clear revelation of the righteous and dreadful judgments of this great God to the world, and upon this accursed generation.

But to clear up more fully the reason for London’s judgments, and God’s righteousness in them: God has indeed spoken very terribly, but he has answered us very righteously. London was not as godly as some say by way of mockery. No! If London had been more generally godly, and more powerfully godly, these judgments might have been escaped and the ruin of the City prevented. No! It was the ungodliness of London that brought the plague and fire upon London. There was a general plague in the heart, a more dangerous infection and deadly plague of sin, before a plague was sent upon the body. There was a fire of various lusts kindled and burning in the breasts of the inhabitants, sometimes sending out flames at the door of the mouth and at the windows of the eyes, before the fire was kindled in the City that swallowed up so many homes.

Thousands of us have fallen into the grave by the plague, and thousands of houses have fallen by the fire, as a great monument over them. And why? “We are fallen by our iniquities” (Hos 14:1). “The crown is fallen from our heads”; and what is the reason? “Because we have sinned against the Lord” (Lam 5:16). God has spoken terribly, but he has answered righteously. As he gives great and special mercies in answer to prayer, so he sends great and extraordinary judgments in answer to sin. There is a voice and a loud cry, especially in some sins, which “entereth into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth” (Jas 5:4). When God speaks by terrible things, he makes only a righteous return to this cry.

These judgments of plague and fire are national judgments, it is true, and may be the product of national sins. I am truly persuaded that God was more highly provoked by some who lived outside the City than by those who lived in it (I mean the profane and ungodly generation, who mostly lived farther off), and that God, being so provoked, was all the more ready to strike and let his hand fall so heavily on London. Yet many of that ungodly crew had made their way into the City itself. Most in the City who were not of them, and did not dare to commit their impieties, still made themselves guilty by not mourning over them and not laboring in their place to do what they could toward a remedy. And London itself has been guilty of so many crying sins (as I will try to show). So God’s righteousness in the terrible things done in London will be evident, especially if we consider:

1. That God has punished London no more than its iniquities have deserved.

2. That God has punished London less than its iniquities have deserved.

1. God has punished London no more than its iniquities have deserved. Great sins deserve great plagues; and have not the sins of London been great? Let us make an inquiry into London’s sins.

Here I will set some sins before you to consider, and let London judge whether she is not guilty, and whether the Lord has not been plaguing her and burning her, and may possibly, indeed probably, bring utter ruin and desolation upon her, unless she sees and mourns and turns all the sooner. It is out of dear and tender love for London (with whom I could willingly live and die) that I write these things, to remind her people of their sins, so that they may take some speedy course toward a remedy and toward turning away the fierce anger of the Lord, which is kindled against them for sin, lest he next proceed to bring utter ruin on them. Surely they have no more reason to think that God’s anger has turned away since the fire than they had to think it had turned away after the plague. Rather, they may conclude that although the fire in the City is quenched, the fire of God’s anger still burns, more dreadfully than the other fire, and that his hand is stretched out still to destroy.

Therefore, O all you who live in and about London, open your eyes and ears and hearts, and bear a word of reproof for your sins. Do not treat this catalogue of your sins as Jehoiakim treated Jeremiah’s scroll, burning it in the fire because he could not bear his words. Instead do with it as John did with his little book: eat it and digest it, though it is bitter in the mouth as well as in the belly. It is bitter medicine, but necessary for the preservation of a sick, languishing city that is ready to give up the ghost.

And here I will begin with sins more directly against the gospel. Natural conscience is not so quick to accuse anyone of these, yet in God’s reckoning they are the most heinous sins. And I would have regard not only to recent sins but also to former ones. These may now be more out of view and forgotten, and some may be hardened in them for several reasons: because the guilty have not been so particularly and sensibly punished (though God’s sparing them was meant to lead them to repentance); or because they have counted their punishments, in some respects, as no punishments at all; or because they have mistaken their punishments, and their hearts have swelled against the instruments God used in them, instead of accepting the punishment of their iniquity and humbling themselves deeply before the Lord. I say, I would call to remembrance former sins as well as recent ones, which are more visible and apparent now. For God, being so slow to anger, has not been quickly moved to such indignation. We have reason to think his wrath was boiling in his breast a long time before it rose to such a height that it boiled over and poured down plague and fire on the City of London. So we may reasonably infer that sins London committed long ago were the fuel placed underneath that made his anger boil. And because other judgments have not produced the proper fruit of repentance, the Lord has been provoked to express that anger in this way, which has been more painfully felt and more dreadful.

Moreover, when I reckon up London’s sins, I do not mean to point at any one party alone, since all parties have sinned. I believe the Lord has been offended with all of them, just as in his judgments he has made no difference, so that all might be awakened to see their faults with sorrow and shame. And if it were fitting, I would begin here with myself, for I am persuaded that my sins, more than those of thousands of others, have helped to fill up the vial of God’s anger. But as I go along, I will try by the grace of God to apply to myself the sins my conscience accuses me of, so that I may bewail and amend them. And I beg every one of you who casts your eyes on these lines to do the same. Compare them with the lines written in the book of your conscience, and where you find a copy of them there, read and read again; consider and lay it to heart. Get on your knees, confess, and labor to drop at least some tears into the bottle. If this little book could help draw those tears from your eyes, and you could be persuaded to pour out such waters before the Lord, they might help to quench the violence of the fire of God’s anger, which we have reason to fear is still burning against us.

1. The first sin of London is slighting the gospel. For more than a hundred years now the gospel has shone out in England from behind the clouds of popery and antichristianism that once overspread the land, and nowhere in England has the gospel been preached with greater power and purity than in London. And what welcome has it found? Has it been valued according to its worth and excellence? Has it been received as a message come down from the God of heaven, expressing his love and goodwill toward the children of men? Has it been received as bringing such good news and tidings as salvation by Jesus Christ?

Read the praise the apostle Peter gives to the salvation made known by the gospel: “Of which salvation the prophets have inquired, and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow: unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you, by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into” (1 Pet 1:10-12).

The prophets of old inquired and searched, but they did not understand the gospel as clearly as it is now revealed. Our Savior tells his disciples “that many prophets and kings had desired to see the things which they saw, and had not seen them, and to hear the things which they did hear, and had not heard them” (Luke 10:24). For indeed “this mystery was hid from ages and generations which God then made manifest unto the saints” (Col 1:26). And the apostle Paul tells us that though the ministry of the law was glorious, so glorious that it made the face of Moses shine (Moses, to whom the law was revealed on the mount), yet it had no glory in comparison with the ministry of the gospel, whose glory so far excelled it (2 Cor 3:7, 10).

The mysteries of God’s wisdom and love revealed in the gospel are so glorious that they are surely worthy of acceptance and esteem. This is all the more so since the angels, who are not so much concerned in them, desire to look into these things, the angels to whom, it is said, there “is made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph 3:10). And yet these great things, reported by those who have preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, have been undervalued in London. The gospel has been slighted in London; and though some have been more notoriously guilty than others, who can altogether excuse themselves from this sin? Now, so that the conviction may be fuller, I shall charge the sin more particularly.

(1) The ignorant in London have been guilty of this sin. The light of the gospel has shone around them, but they have muffled themselves up in darkness and let Satan keep them blindfolded, lest the light of the glorious gospel should enter and lead them out of his snare. Thousands in the City have been willfully ignorant. Though they have had the means of knowledge so near and so easy to come by, multitudes have perished out of London, and multitudes still remain in their ignorance. Oh, how the learning of catechisms has been neglected! And how few have tried to acquaint themselves with the principles of the Christian religion, so that they might have a fuller and clearer understanding of the gospel!

(2) The vicious and profane have been guilty of slighting the gospel. How many such people have crowded, and are still crowding, out of London into hell, while the light of the gospel shone on them that would have guided them in the way to heaven! Because this light has been too troublesome in exposing and rebuking their dear and sweet sins, they have hated it. They have tried to flee as far from it as they could, or to shut their eyes against it as hard as they could.

(3) The civil, outwardly respectable people have also been guilty. There have been many sober citizens and matrons, well-behaved young men and young women, who have been free from the gross pollutions that are in the world through lust. They have been diligent in their callings, just in their dealings, courteous and sweet-natured in their behavior, and yet without the least degree of the power of godliness, without which it is impossible for them to be saved.

Alas, none of these have given the gospel any warm welcome in their hearts, though it has been preached so long in the city. They have valued the kindness of a friend, but they have not regarded the kindness of God. If a messenger had come and told them how they might save their estates when they were in danger of loss, or how to save their relatives when they were in danger of death, oh, how welcome that messenger and his tidings would have been! But when ministers have preached the gospel to them, which tells them how they should save their souls when they are in danger of death and hell, such tidings have had no relish for them, as if they had no souls, or were in no danger. The light has shone before them, but there has been a cloud in their eye, so that they could not discern it; or else they have looked at it from far off. They have not drawn near to it, brought it home and set it up in their hearts, so that they might order themselves and their whole way of life according to its guidance and direction.

(4) The hypocrites have been guilty of this sin. They have drawn nearer to this light than any of the former, so near that they have seemed to be clothed with its beams. They have lit their lamps by it and have shone out in a glorious blaze of outward profession. Yet even in these there has been an inward, secret distaste for the gospel, especially for some things in it. There have been some secret rooms in their hearts into which they would not let the light enter, lest it should expose the beloved Delilahs they have nourished and brought up there. They have been rotten at the core, and have had some unmortified lust within that the world has not noticed. So if they have received the gospel, it has been only in its outward form, not in its inward power; if they have received the light, it has been without its heat and life. That is how it has come about that some of these hypocrites, who seemed to be stars of the first magnitude, have proved to be only blazing stars and comets, which in a short time have fallen and sunk into wild opinions or fearful apostasy.

(5) The erroneous have been guilty of this sin. Some in London, and not a few, under this glorious sunshine of the gospel that has come from heaven, have lit a candle at the fire of hell and labored to set it up in opposition to the true light of the gospel, crying out, “New light, new light!” Satan himself has appeared in London like an angel of light. He has employed his emissaries and wicked instruments, who have seemed to be ministers of righteousness but have had a wolfish, ravenous heart under the dress and clothing of the sheep, to spread many damnable and destructive opinions in our church under pretense of new discoveries and revelations of the Spirit.

This false taper light could never stand the test or send out any beams of convincing truth, but grew dark and disappeared at the approach of the sun wherever the sun shone in its power. Yet too many people, whose eyes were too sore to look at the glorious beams of the sun, and whose hearts were at the same time too fearful to remain wholly in the dark without any show of light, withdrew from the former and sought after the latter in dark corners. Only there could such rotten wood seem to shine, and such candles give any light. Choosing night rather than day, they followed these false wandering fires, though the fires led them over many a precipice.

It is sad to remember, and sobering to consider seriously, what errors and strong delusions have abounded and prevailed in our gospel days. How many false teachers there have been among us, who have crept in unawares! How many Jesuits and priests have been sent from Rome and other places to rend and tear our Protestant church to pieces, so that they might make way for bringing in popery, or at least cast disgrace on Protestantism, delude many of us with the opinions they have broached, and confirm their own people in their delusions! In this way many cunning and learned Jesuits have disguised themselves in the dress of tailors, shoemakers and other manual tradesmen, so that what was the product of much study might seem to the people to have been taught them by the Spirit.

In this way these cursed villains, ordained of old to condemnation, have secretly brought in damnable heresies. Some call themselves Quakers, others Ranters, others Seekers, others Antinomians, others Brownists, others Anabaptists, putting themselves into any shape so that they might mislead, and the better lie in wait to deceive poor souls. Some deny the Lord that bought them, setting up the fancy of a Christ within them as their Savior; others deny the foundation, undermining the divine authority of the Scriptures; others labor to overthrow the doctrine of justification, striking at the most fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. And all of them try to undermine the ministry that Christ has instituted and sends, calling its ministers antichristian, Baal’s priests and false prophets. They have done what they could to bring those ministers and their ministry into disrepute, so that they might prevail more effectively with the people to receive their false doctrines, and so arm them against ever being undeceived.

Sweetening their poison with good words and fair speeches, they have deceived the hearts of the simple, so that many have followed their pernicious ways, and because of them the way of truth has been spoken evil of. Whatever good words they had, they were only feigned words, by which they made merchandise of souls, “whose judgment now a long time lingereth not, and whose damnation slumbereth not” (2 Pet 2:1-3).

The apostle calls these men spots and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings; wells without water; clouds carried about with a tempest; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved blackness of darkness forever (2 Pet 2:13, 17; Jude 13).

And yet too many in London listened to many of these men and adhered to them, rather than to the true ministers of the gospel, commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ himself and ordained according to the prescription of his Word.

Then many laymen, some of them gifted (who would have given a better account of their gifts at the great day if they had kept their station), and some without gifts but with a great measure of ignorance and confidence, sometimes stepped up into pulpits and often took it upon themselves to preach in private. They invaded the office and intruded into the work of Christ’s ambassadors. Christ has appointed a special office for that work, and has set a hedge around it more than around any other office we read of in Scripture. But they ventured to break over the hedge, and I am confident that they did so to the affront and displeasure of the great King, whose representatives in the world his ambassadors are.

And not only were gullible women led captive by the deceivers who crept in when so many took the liberty to preach, but also men who professed themselves to be wise and to have attained a degree of light above the common people. Yet in forsaking the ministry and ordinances of Jesus Christ, which he appointed to continue to the end of the world for instructing, perfecting and establishing the saints in knowledge and faith, they became fools and “children, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of them” who led them aside (Eph 4:11-14).

Now all these people have been slighters of the gospel of Jesus Christ: the ignorant, the profane, the hypocrite and the erroneous. If you put them all in one company, how few will remain in London who have sincerely and heartily embraced the truth as it is in Jesus, and on whom the gospel has made a powerful and saving impression! And even among those who have been affected and converted by the preaching of the gospel, and held it in great esteem when they first heard and believed, how their esteem of the gospel fell and their affection cooled! Did not the ordinances of the gospel begin to lose their worth and excellence, and grow tedious and wearisome to them? Oh, how generally unthankful London was for its gospel privileges and liberties!

Indeed, many began to be very fussy and spoiled, and the gospel was not relished unless it was served up with fine garnishes and dressings. In these some ministers perhaps tried too hard to please themselves and the people, and then the sauce was relished more than the food itself. The appetite of many was so spoiled that plain, wholesome, soul-saving truths would not go down with them. Londoners began to be glutted with the gospel, and like the Israelites in the wilderness, their souls began to loathe the manna that came down from heaven. There was a strange fastidiousness in spiritual palates, which in many turned into a loathing of the food, so much so that the gospel became a burden to them. That is why many turned away their ears from the truth and were turned to errors. They could not endure to hear sound doctrine, but having itching ears, heaped up for themselves teachers according to their own lusts (2 Tim 4:3-4).

And those who continued steadfast in the truth did not prize the gospel as they should; none of them prized it according to its dignity and worth. No wonder, then, if God grows angry at the contempt and affronts offered to him in all this, and so largely eases them of their burden, and so largely withdraws the food they grew so weary of. No wonder that he allows so many of their teachers to be thrust into corners, and so largely withdraws the beams of the light that was so much abused. And when they do not feel his displeasure in this, no wonder if he sends the plague and the fire to awaken them to a sense of it.

When the king sent out his servants to call the guests to the wedding feast, they made light of it, excused themselves and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise; and the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully and killed them. Then the king was angry, and sent out his armies to destroy those murderers and burn their city (Matt 22:1-8).

God has sent out his servants to call Londoners to this feast. How many invitations they have had to come to Christ, to accept him as the one to save them, and to feed on him, from whom alone they can get any spiritual nourishment! But how many in London have had their excuses: they have been following their merchandise and other business and could not come. And how his servants have been received, the Lord knows. I do not say that London has treated them spitefully and slain them; but has not their message been slighted by London? Is it any wonder, then, if the King who sent them is angry and sends a fire to burn down the city?

No greater favor could be shown, and no greater privilege enjoyed, than to have the gospel powerfully preached and the ordinances purely administered. But has it generally been counted so in London? Have not many thousands in the city preferred merchandise and thriving in the world before it (though even in that they have not thrived)?

God has gone to such expense to work out a way for man’s salvation. He has shown such wonders of astonishing love in sending his only begotten Son out of heaven to clothe himself in our flesh, so that in it he might purchase life and salvation for us, who had sunk so low from our original state through sin and were exposed to death and wrath and to unavoidable, endless misery in hell. And he has sent his ambassadors of peace to bring us the glad tidings of this, to make known in his name the thing itself, its author, its terms and the way, and to entreat us to accept life and reconciliation with God. Yet this is the God who, without any injury to himself, could ruin us everlastingly and get himself a name by it. That we should then undervalue and slight both messenger and message when the gospel is preached is surely an affront to the Lord who has sent his ambassadors on this errand, and it carries with it an ingratitude that cannot be paralleled.

No doubt this sin of slighting the gospel is a chief sin that has provoked God to come out against London in such fury. And unless London repents soon, labors to recover its relish and esteem for the gospel, and gives clearer evidence of it, I fear the Lord will remove the gospel from them entirely, and then nothing is likely to follow but desolation and woe. God does not remove his glory all at once, but by steps. First the glory of the Lord departs from the inner court to the threshold of the house (Ezek 10:3-4); then from the threshold of the house to the door of the east gate (Ezek 10:18-19); then it goes from the midst of the city and stands upon the mountain (Ezek 11:23). The gospel is the glory of London. Has the glory of the Lord made none of these removes? Has it not come out of the inner court? Has it not left the threshold? Is not its departure from the city altogether threatened? Will anything recover it if we do not recover our appetite for it, and prize it, and cry after it?

If the gospel goes, God will go, since the gospel is the sign and the means of his special presence; and “woe be unto us when God shall depart from us” (Hos 9:12). And if God departs with the gospel, farewell to peace and prosperity in England. I dare to be confident that nothing but temporal misery and ruin will follow. If the eclipse brings such misery, what will the total darkening of the sun do?

2. The second sin of London is unfruitfulness in such fertile soil. This sin has accompanied the former and followed from it.

London was not only a Goshen but an Eden. God chose London out to be his garden; he has hedged it, planted, watered, pruned and manured it. No place in the world has had a greater plenty of the means of grace. God has given the former and the latter rain, and the sweet dews of heaven have fallen on this place both morning and evening: in the morning seed was sown, and in the evening the hand was not withdrawn. Preaching in London has been plentiful and powerful, in season and out of season, on the Sabbath day and on weekdays.

But has London answered all God’s care and cost? Has not God come for many years together seeking fruit, and found nothing but the leaves of profession (Luke 13)? Has he not often threatened to cut down the unfruitful trees and not let them take up his ground any longer? And when, through the intercession of the vinedresser, he has spared them this year and another year, has not the same unfruitfulness still remained? What could the Lord have done more to his vineyard than he has done (Isa 5:4-6)? Why then, when he looked for grapes, did it bring forth only leaves, or wild grapes?

Is it any wonder, then, if the Lord pulls down its hedge so that it may be eaten up by the wild boar and the beast of the field, and breaks down its wall and makes it waste and desolate? Is it any wonder if he withholds the clouds so that they do not rain on it, and lets briars and thorns spring up in it where the plants used to grow? When the vine is unfruitful it is the most useless of all trees, fit for nothing but the fire (Ezek 15). The Lord has threatened to gather the unfruitful branches, cast them into the fire and burn them (John 15:6). And the earth that drinks in the rain that often falls on it, and instead of herbs fit for the use of him by whom it is dressed brings forth nothing but briars and thorns, God rejects and curses, and in the end burns (Heb 6:7-8).

Oh, the unfruitfulness of London! Oh, the briars and thorns that have flourished in this ground and choked the seed of the Word! Oh, the hemlock, the thistle and the wormwood that have sprung up in the furrows of the field! Oh, the tares that have abounded and overtopped the wheat, and how little good grain has been brought forth! Oh, the wild olive trees that have grown up in God’s garden, and the wild figs and wild grapes that God’s fig trees and vines have yielded to him! Oh, the leanness of his sheep in such fat pasture! Oh, the barrenness, the barrenness of London under such plentiful showers of the Word!

Instead of the fruits of righteousness, which are to the praise and glory of God, there have been the fruits of unrighteousness and wickedness, which are to God’s dishonor. Instead of the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, gentleness, meekness, temperance, goodness and faith, there have been the works of the flesh: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, hatred, variance, emulations, wraths, strifes, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings and such like, of which the apostle tells us that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:19-24).

And of those who have not abounded in the grosser works of the flesh, very few have been very fruitful in good works. London has had the means of grace, and yet most of its people are without grace, and few have much grace. London has had powerful ordinances, but what powerful effect have they produced? What have they to show for all their prayers and sermons and sacraments? Have they attained a great measure of mortification? Has grace grown up to a great height? What evidences, what experiences have even the best gained, compared with what they might have gained had they been more diligent?

Allow me to show a little more particularly the unfruitfulness of London with regard to repentance, faith, love and new obedience, the fruit that God so much looks for and so much delights in.

(1) Where have the fruits of repentance been in London? Calls to repentance there have been, frequent and fervent. Reason for repentance there has been: sins numerous and heinous. Need of repentance there has been, so that judgments, temporal and eternal, might be turned aside, and pardon and happiness obtained. And yet, oh, the impenitence and hardheartedness of London! Few hearts have bled under the sharp sword of the Word; there has been little tenderness under the most melting sermons. The most powerful preaching brought forth few converts and penitents in London, especially before the gospel’s eclipse. The work of conversion was at a standstill, though there were so many unconverted people in the city. And by the impenitence and hardness of heart in London, God’s treasures of wrath have been filled up. In some measure he has opened them in these recent judgments he has inflicted, and yet the great day of his wrath is still to come (Rom 2:4-5).

(2) Where have the fruits of faith been in London? How unbelief has abounded, the great gospel sin, more dangerous than any other, and more heinous in London than in any other place! Oh, the thick veil of unbelief that has hidden gospel mysteries and things far off from the eyes of this people! Oh, the evil heart of unbelief that has shut the door against the Lord Jesus Christ, who has knocked so long to be let in! Oh, the senseless folly of London, to believe no more! Truths have been made so plain and clear, promises so great and sure have been made known, Christ has been preached and offered, heaven has been revealed and held out, and all have such need; and yet most of them shut eye and ear and heart, and through unbelief refuse! To give God the lie and turn their backs on him, to wound Christ and trample his blood underfoot, to rebuff the Spirit and send him away grieved from the heart, as men do by their unbelief: this sin provokes the Lord to great displeasure.

(3) Where have the fruits of love been in London? Oh, the lack of love to God and to one another! The grace of love is necessary and sweet, and it has been much pressed, but little exercised in London. There has been much love of the world, but little love of the Father; hatred of the brethren has abounded, but there was little brotherly love. Burning anger there has been, little burning love; burning lusts, little burning love; inordinate carnal love, little true spiritual love. Carnal love has overflowed its bounds, but spiritual love has been at a very low ebb. And when love in London has grown cold, is it any wonder if God’s anger has grown so hot and broken out into such flames as we have seen?

(4) Where have the fruits of new obedience been in London, and the expression of love to Jesus Christ by keeping his commandments, though his commandments are not burdensome?

3. A third sin of London is hypocrisy in the profession of religion. This sin prevailed exceedingly in the recent times when the profession of religion had become the fashion. Religion was near in the mouths of most, but far from their inward parts. There was a general face of religion, but it was no more than skin-deep; it was seated in the countenance, not rooted in the heart. How many painted sepulchers we had in London, outwardly fair and beautiful, inwardly full of rottenness and wickedness! How much sounding brass we had in our streets then! Hypocrites made a great noise and stir, but they were hollow at heart. Most of our gold was counterfeit; we had water instead of wine, and dross instead of silver.

Oh, how religion was abused! Some made it a stirrup to climb up into the seat of honor; others made it a cloak to cover their covetous practices; many base and wicked designs were carried on under the pretense of religion.

It would take too much time to set out hypocrites in all their shapes and to paint hypocrisy in all its colors. London has abounded with hypocrites in the past, and more recently it has not been free of them. If hellfire is especially the portion of hypocrites hereafter (Matt 24:51), no wonder, then, if God is angry with a place for this sin here.

4. The fourth sin of London is formality and lukewarmness in the worship of God. There was much formality when there was no set form of worship, and I do not suppose that set forms have quickened people to any more liveliness. There was indeed a face of worship in London; but in most places, was there not a face only, or little more than a face? God is holy and jealous, “a great King, and his name is dreadful” (Mal 1:14). “God is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). But has his worship in London matched this? Has there been the spiritual worship that he requires? Let London seriously reflect on how they have conducted themselves toward God in their devotions. When they have seemed to draw near to him, have they had a due awe and dread of the great name of God upon them? Have they worshiped him with reverence and godly fear? Some have shown outward reverence, more than he has required, in bowing at names and toward places; but have they had inward reverence and fear of God in their hearts? Have they clothed themselves with humility when they have come into his presence? Has inward fervor and delight gone along with their outward acts of worship?

Alas, how formal London has been in God’s worship, especially of late! They have prayed, but what kind of prayers have they been? Could they deserve the name of prayers? Were those prayers likely to prevent judgment or turn away wrath? Some confessions of sin have been made, but so general and formal that they were very unlikely to work the heart up to sorrow and repentance. And where some have been more particular, has not much formality clung to them? Where was heartfelt grief and sorrow for sin to be found? Would not a small vial hold all the tears that have dropped from the eyes of great assemblies, even on the days of their most solemn humiliation? Has not sin been rolled under the tongue while confession of sin was on the tip of it? Have not the confessions of many sounded as if they came to ask leave to commit sin rather than humbly to bewail it? At least, whatever their confessions have been, have they not taken that leave?

Petitions have been made for pardon, grace and sanctification; but has it not been lip-prayer, without heartfelt desire? Has it not been offered as if they did not much care whether they succeeded or not? As if they could manage well enough without a pardon? As if they had no need of grace and holiness, but must say something for form’s and custom’s sake? Has there not been an enmity in the hearts of many against the very things they have seemed to desire with their lips? Who among them have stirred themselves up to lay hold on God? Who have wrestled in prayer with fervent desires, with faith and with importunity? There has been hearing in London; but how little believing! How little relishing of the word, and receiving it with love! There has been singing; but how little joy and melody of the heart in the Lord!

How formal and lukewarm London has been! How much of the Laodicean temper they have shown in all the ordinances! And might not God say to London what he said of old to Jerusalem in Isaiah 1:11-14: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” Such services are to no purpose. They are vain worship and do not reach the end of worship: they neither profit the one who offers them nor please the one to whom they are offered. Can such formal services be effective to obtain pardon or peace? Can they hold up the spirit in a day of trouble? Will not the morning cloud and early dew of such righteousness flee away and vanish at the approach of the sun? Will not such spiders’ webs be broken to pieces by a stormy wind? How formalists behave as if they had no religion at all when they fall into trouble! When God thunders by his judgments, what can a cold, formal, empty prayer do? When death appears before them with a grim face, what comfort can such people reap from looking back on such services? What evidence for heaven can they gather from any of their outward devotions?

And are such services not of just as little purpose with regard to God? May not God say to them about their fasting and praying, “Did you fast unto me? did you pray at all unto me?” (Zech 7:5). Or he may say, as he says to the Jews in that passage of Isaiah, that he was full of their services, even to loathing, and that he took no delight in them: “Who hath required these things at your hands to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations, incense is an abomination unto me, I cannot away with your assemblies, my soul hateth them, they are a trouble to me, I am weary to bear them.”

The Lord is greatly offended by formal, hypocritical services. By them people flatter and mock him; and is he taken in by flattery? Such services are like a dead, cold, black, mangled, rotten, stinking carcass without the soul and spirit, which cannot help but be very unsavory and displeasing. They are like the lame, blind, crippled and sick cattle that were not fit to be offered in sacrifice under the law: “If ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto thy governor, will he be pleased with thee?” (Mal 1:8). And will God be pleased, then?

When such people seem to serve God with their outward man, they serve the devil and their own lusts with their inward man. God sometimes has the form; the devil has the power. God has the show; the devil has the substance. God has the bark, the rind, the shell; the devil has the kernel. God has the cabinet; the devil gets the jewel. They give God the devil’s leftovers, the refuse, as it were, of their own lusts. For they spend the strength and vigor of soul and body in serving the devil and gratifying their own lusts, and then think they can put God off with anything, giving him only some dead, cold, faint, empty, heartless, lifeless outward services. And even in these they are swayed by some carnal motives, which are the secret spring that turns the wheel of all their external services. Oh, how abominable all such worship is in the sight of God! Has not formality in worship been one sin of London that has helped to fill up the ephah? When the means God has appointed for turning away his anger are used in such a way that they themselves become a provocation, it is no wonder if his wrath breaks out beyond remedy.

5. A fifth sin of London is division among professing Christians. Differing convictions have made wide breaches and divisions in London, and from these divisions have arisen great animosities and quarrels, to the shame of Christianity and of the Protestant religion. Has not God been provoked to anger by this? Has he not contended with those who profess religion, and by the common scourge he has brought upon them, called aloud to them for union, and for more heartfelt agreement and affection than they have had before? And has he not given them liberty and opportunity, had they been minded and cared to use it, to meet together for the sake of healing? But have professing Christians of the different parties perceived God’s meaning in the scourge upon their backs? Have they listened to God’s call? Have they seized and made good use of opportunities to close up their wide breaches? I hope there has been some closing in affection among some; but how rarely has it been found! And while there are still such breaches among us, is it not just for God to make further breaches upon us, as he has done by his judgments?

6. A sixth sin of London is neglect of reformation. This neglect has been fourfold: neglect of personal reformation, of family reformation, of city reformation and of church reformation.

(1) Neglect of personal reformation, both in heart and in life.

[1] Who in London has seriously and very diligently worked to reform their heart? When hearts were so unclean and polluted, who has labored to get them washed? When such roots of bitterness have been springing up, and such weeds of lust have been growing there, who has tried to pull them up? There has been outward neatness in London: washing and rinsing, rubbing and scouring. But oh, the inward filth! Those who have had clean houses, clean clothes, and clean faces and hands have had foul hearts. Who has taken care every day to rinse and scour their inside, to bring their heart to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness, and to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, so that they might advance every day to greater perfection in holiness? Those who have been careful to dress their bodies every day have been very careless in dressing their hearts. They have neglected to put on the white robes of Christ’s righteousness, which alone can cover their spiritual nakedness and deformity, and to get the jewels of grace, which alone can adorn the soul and make it lovely in the sight of God.

Heart work is hard work, so hard that most people have left it alone. They have been discouraged by the difficulty. The opposition of Satan and lust to this work has been so strong that they have been quickly overpowered at their first attempts and efforts to change and set right the disorders they have perceived.

Heart work is secret work. Many have busied themselves with the more open work of religion; few have taken pains with their hearts in secret. Many take heed to their tongues, what they say and in front of whom; to their hands, what they do; to their feet, where they go; but few take heed to their hearts. Murder, adultery, theft and similar sins have been committed in the heart by many who would have been afraid and ashamed of the outward acts.

Oh, the unwatchfulness over the heart there has been in London! Citizens have watched their gates, watched their streets and watched their houses; but how few have watched their hearts, what comes in and what goes out! How few have set a watch before the door of their lips and ears and their other senses, which are the inlets of sin, and over their hearts, from which the issues of sin flow! How few have kept their hearts with all diligence! How few have labored to govern their thoughts, to rule their passions, to subject their wills to Christ, and to surrender all their affections to his disposal and obedience! Heart reformation has been greatly neglected.

[2] Who in London has pursued reformation of life as they should? How few there have been who were effectually persuaded to put away the evil of their doings from before the eyes of the Lord, to cease from evil, and who have learned to do well! How few have broken off their sins by repentance and thoroughly amended their ways, measuring their actions by the rule of the Word! How few have had the law of God written in their hearts and its copy written out in their lives, displaying its precepts in their conduct! How few in London have been like so many epistles of Christ, in whom the will and grace of their Master might be read! Who has walked in Christ’s steps, walking as he walked, and followed him in the way of obedience and self-denial? Who has shone like a light in dark places and times, adorning their profession and living as befits the gospel?

There have been great irregularities in the lives of most Londoners: little gospel reformation, little making religion their business, little holy and exact living. If a stranger had looked into our city and observed the lives of most people, without knowing that they bore the name of Christians, would he not have judged them to be heathens, and many of them, in their dealings, to be worse than Turks and infidels? So personal reformation has been neglected.

(2) There has been a great neglect of family reformation in London. How few have resolved with Joshua, and worked accordingly, that they and their households should serve the Lord! How few have set up religious worship in their families! Have not many hundreds of houses in the city gone without family prayer from one end of the week to the other? And is it strange that the Lord has burned down those houses in which the occupants would not deign to worship him? And where there has been some prayer in many families, it was only once a day, and that so late at night, when the body was so tired and sleepy and the soul so dull and unfit for God’s service, that the prayers have been no prayers, or lost prayers, prayers which provoked him to anger instead of pleasing him. How few labored to instruct their families, to catechize their children and servants, and to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord! Has not God threatened to pour out his wrath on irreligious families (Jer 10:25)?

(3) Neglect of city reformation. Have not the magistrates of London been at fault here? Let them ask their own consciences whether they have worked for the reformation of the city to the utmost of their power, according to the trust and opportunity the Lord has put into their hands. Let them ask whether, as God’s deputies, they have used their influence to promote religion in its zealous practice. Indeed, let them ask whether they have put the laws already made into execution against Sabbath-breakers, swearers and drunkards, taking pains to find out and punish such offenders.

(4) Neglect of church reformation. And is no blame to be laid on church officers? Has there been zeal for church discipline, and faithful execution of it, according to the rules of the word? Has not the Lord Jesus Christ been affronted in his kingly office by some who have imposed precepts of their own on people’s consciences instead of vigorously working to carry out his? Have they not taken the power of the keys out of the hands of those to whom the Lord has entrusted it, and so made it impossible to exercise discipline according to the laws of Christ? Have not the tender and most conscientious lain under the censures of some, rather than the openly profane and scandalously wicked?

Am I speaking of neglect of reformation? No; have not many who call themselves ministers labored for its overthrow rather than its promotion? Have they not taken digs from their pulpits at holiness and zealous profession, and backed them up with dissolute living, with malicious opposition, and with persecution, especially of those who have been the most religious? There have been sad neglects of reformation in London, and that while London lay under such obligations to reform. As Christians they were bound by their baptismal vows and their renewed vows. As Protestants of the Reformed religion they were bound to work for a reformation. They were bound by mercies. And have they been under no other obligations? And has not the neglect of reformation, in spite of all these obligations, made them guilty of unworthy ingratitude, of unfaithfulness, indeed of perjury itself? I truly believe this is the great sin for which God is scourging London. God is contending for a reformation; and if they do not pursue it more vigorously, and soon, I fear he will bring desolation upon them.

7. A seventh sin of London is fearful apostasy, and a spirit of compliance with the sins of the times. How many in London who formerly made a great profession of religion have shown themselves to be rotten hypocrites! Casting off the sheep’s clothing and laying aside all profession, they have given themselves up to dissolute and licentious living. Formerly they seemed to be true penitents, washed from their iniquities; but they have returned with the dog to its vomit, and with the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire (2 Pet 2:22). Formerly they were swept a little within and garnished outwardly with a fair profession; but the unclean spirit has returned, has entered without any great difficulty with seven worse spirits, has defiled them more than before, and has made their last state worse than their first (Matt 12:43-45). I am not speaking so much of those who worship God in this mode or that mode, or of changes in this; but of those who once professed religion and now do not worship God in any mode at all, but give themselves wholly to their lusts, and are ashamed to be called, or thought, religious.

They would not now look like a saint or speak like a saint, much less live like a saint. So in our days many have cast off all fear of God and devoted themselves, with the hellhounds of the times, to the service of the devil, resolving to do all they can to promote the interest of his kingdom. And if some are a little more awkward in his service, and not altogether so like him, nor such apt scholars right away, as others who have been educated in his school from childhood, they still learn very fast, and their progress in a short time is astonishing. And in respect of apostasy, they come nearer to the image of the devil than those who have always been tutored by him.

Now for any in London to forsake God so that they might serve the devil, and to draw back from the ways of holiness so that they might walk in the ways of wickedness, casts a great slur on God and his ways. In effect they say that the devil is a better master than God, and that the way of sin, which leads to hell, is more desirable than the way of holiness, which alone can bring people to heaven. The Lord threatens that his soul shall have no pleasure in such apostates (Heb 10:38). This is an understatement, and we are to understand by it that the Lord is highly displeased with such persons.

See how God pleads with apostatizing Israel in Jeremiah 2:9-13: “Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord. Pass ye over to the isles of Chittim, and see, and send unto Kedar, and diligently consider, if there be any such thing? Hath any nation changed their gods, which yet are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit! Be astonished O ye heavens at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord; for my people have committed two great evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out unto themselves broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” And this follows: “The young lions roared and yelled upon him, and laid his land waste; his cities are burnt without inhabitant” (Jer 2:15); and, “Thou hast procured these things unto thyself, because thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God” (Jer 2:17); and, “Thy own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts” (Jer 2:19). And may not God plead in this way with the apostates of London, and punish them as he did his people Israel?

8. The eighth sin of London is deafening its ears against all God’s calls. The Lord has called to London by his ministers, but the people have been like the deaf adder that will not listen to the voice of the charmer. They have stopped their ears, turned away their shoulder, and made their hearts like an adamant stone. God has called by his mercies, but this voice has been too soft, and they have only slept more complacently in sin. After other means, God has called by afflictions, first lighter ones, then heavier. And yet how many in London have walked, and still walk, contrary to God, and will not return to him who has struck them? They have been incorrigible under all God’s correcting rods. When God spoke by the plague, they were a little awakened, but they quickly dropped off to sleep again. When the plague was somewhat over, they returned to their trades again and to their sins again, but they did not return to the Lord. And since the judgment of the plague was so largely lost on them and did them so little good, this no doubt has provoked God to turn his hand against them so quickly and unexpectedly and bring on them the judgment of the fire. And if they still walk contrary to God, they must expect God to walk contrary to them until he has consumed them.

9. A ninth sin of London is profaneness, and a loose and frothy spirit, especially in the young and rising generation. I do not accuse all of them, for I am confident that there are serious and godly young people growing up. But oh, that there were no reason to say that young people in general are profane and wicked, as well as those who have grown more mature in wickedness! And this profaneness has shown itself in three ways: in profane use of God’s name, in profane breaking of God’s day, and in profane scoffing at God’s people.

(1) In profane use of God’s name. How grossly the third commandment has been broken in the city! The great and dreadful name of the Lord God ought to make people tremble when they mention it, and to command their spirits into awe and reverence. Yet how many have taken it in vain and used it to fill out the sentences of their ordinary talk! And not only that: how the name of God has been tossed about in the black mouths of the children of darkness, and even torn to pieces by their hideous oaths and curses! What a hellish noise the sound of full-mouthed oaths has sometimes made in the streets! It was enough to make the hair stand on end of anyone who feels on his spirit the greatness of that Majesty which is so brazenly affronted by it. Oh, the swearing that Londoners have used in buying and selling! Many parents have been so addicted to this sin in their families that their little children had no sooner learned to speak than they also learned from them to swear by the name of God. That has been all the teaching about God that they have given them. A devilish teaching indeed, for which their children will one day curse and execrate them in hell.

But if you had laid your ear to the taverns and alehouses and brothels and other devil’s houses that once stood in London, and listened to the talk of many of the devil’s imps in their drinking and gambling and other lewd practices, especially when they were a little crossed and vexed, oh, what language of hell you might have heard! How those cursed villains, in the heat of their wine and anger, have fired volleys of oaths into the face of the God of heaven! Whetting their tongues like a sharp sword, they have not been afraid to wound the name of God whenever they received any injury from men. Oh, what poison of asps has been under their lips! But a worse poison of sin has been in their hearts, and out of its evil treasure and abundance these oaths and blasphemies have come.

But who can find words to set out the evil of this sin? It does not have the temptation of pleasure, profit, or honor that other sins have, and therefore it is strong evidence of a monstrously wicked heart. And who can express God’s displeasure at this sin, for which he sometimes makes a whole land mourn? And has not this sin provoked the Lord to utter his angry voice in plaguing and burning the city, so that they might be afraid to abuse his name any more?

(2) In profane breaking of God’s day. Sabbath-breaking was a common sin in London. I do not say it was broken so much by doing the ordinary work of people’s particular callings, but by something worse. How many spent the Sabbath in eating to excess and drinking until they were drunk, in sleeping, in walking out into the fields, in sports and recreations! Many wholly neglected the worship of God on that day, and instead did the devil more service on the Lord’s Day than on all the other days of the week put together.

The many weeks of Sabbaths that London had in the time of the plague seem to me to have rebuked London for profaning the weekly Sabbath. And the great fire (I will not call it a bonfire, as though it were a good fire, because it was so destructive to London), which began in the city on the Lord’s Day, rebuked London for those lesser fires (I will not call them bonfires, as though they were good fires, because they were so offensive to God) which had been kindled in the streets not long before, on a day that called for a different kind of work. I say nothing about whether there was any just occasion for those fires, and for the ringing of bells (most of which were melted before they were rung so generally again), and for such a show of mirth and rejoicing at that time.

As the citizens carried out their goods and lay in the fields in grief and fear, it might have reminded them how often they had walked out into those same fields on the Lord’s Day for their recreation. They should rather have been hearing the word preached; or, if that was over, repeating it in their own families, giving and receiving instruction; or in their private rooms at the throne of grace; or occupied in meditation. As God delights in those who call his Sabbaths a delight, and makes sweet promises to them, so he is highly displeased with Sabbath-breakers and has pronounced severe threats against them: “If ye will not hearken to me to hallow the Sabbath day; I will kindle a fire in the gates of Jerusalem which shall devour the palaces thereof, and shall not be quenched” (Jer 17:27).

(3) In profane scoffing at God’s people. The name of a saint, or of a godly man, has been a laughingstock to many profane spirits in London, and they have used it as a term of reproach. How God’s people, especially the stricter and more zealous, have been made the song of drunkards and laughed at in the streets! Horrid impiety! As if it were more shameful to be like the holy God than to be like the foul devil, and to be employed in the work of angels than to drudge in Satan’s chains!

No wonder if God is angry with a place where such vipers have made their home. Profaneness is a great sin, and it has brought ruin on us.

10. A tenth sin of London is pride. Because this sin is so odious to God, so destructive where it abounds, and so universal in London, I will speak of it at greater length, with regard both to its inward workings and to its outward expressions. When these are laid open, I believe no one will be able to say they are wholly free of it.

(1) The inward workings of pride. Oh, how the poison of this sin has envenomed the spirits of most people to a very high degree! How many self-admirers there have been in London, puffed up with an overweening opinion of their own excellence! What high, towering, swelling thoughts they have had of themselves! What secret self-pleasing, what lifting themselves up in their own esteem!

Some have esteemed themselves for what is really a matter of shame. They have admired themselves for their own wit and gifts, when those gifts have lain fallow and not been used for God, or when they have been used to his dishonor. They have been wise, but wise to do evil; men of understanding, but understanding to practice iniquity. They have had cunning craftiness, but only to deceive, defraud, and overreach, or to plot and contrive mischief against others. They have had a ripe wit, a quick understanding, a rich imagination, and fluent speech, but these have been employed about toys and trifles, or something worse, and their outlet has been foolish, empty compliments and courtship, jesting with Scripture, scoffing at the religious, or dirty and obscene talk.

Others have admired themselves for what they never really had, except in their own imagination. Some admire their gifts and learning, thinking themselves great scholars when no one has thought so but themselves. Others admire their grace and godliness, when their silver has been dross, and their grace either wholly counterfeit or so mixed with unnoticed corruption that, if they examined it, they might find themselves very poor in the very thing they thought themselves so rich in. And if they looked to the root and principle of their actions, they might find great flaws and deficiency in the very things they thought most highly of.

How many in London have had a very honorable opinion of themselves, preferring themselves above others, yes, above the whole world? Few have measured themselves by the rule; they have measured themselves by their own fancies or by other people’s opinion. How many have thought themselves to be something when they were nothing, and rejoiced in their actions as excellent and admirable? They did so not because they had proved and tested those actions by the word, but because others accepted and commended them, and because they compared them with the actions of other people whom they fancied they surpassed.

Oh, how some have lifted themselves above others, regarding themselves as far more worthy, without any real ground! Their eye has been on their own good things, overlooking the secret evil because people cannot see it; and their eye has been on other people’s evil things, overlooking the good that was out of plain view. Their eye has been on their own best things and on others’ worst things, magnifying others’ faults and making light of their own. In this way, in their thoughts, they have brought others down through uncharitableness, and lifted themselves up on the ruins that their uncharitableness has made of others’ worth. And when they have been more highly esteemed because they made a greater show, this opinion of themselves has been confirmed; whereas in truth others, who made less show and were less esteemed, had more sincerity and more secret, hidden excellence.

I might go on to trace the inward workings of pride in the self-love it has produced. What marvelous affection proud people have had for themselves, in spite of their ugliness and spiritual deformity, the rottenness and corruption within them, and the many lusts of their hearts! Pride has covered all of these, and a thousand faults in themselves, just as charity covers a thousand faults in others. Pride has put a fair gloss and varnish on everything and has shown such people to themselves as very lovely and attractive. Pride has also chosen their friends for them. These friends have been loved, not according to the worth they actually had, but according to how highly they rated the proud person’s worth; and if they fell in their estimation of him, they fell in his affection.

I might show the workings of pride in the hatred, anger, spite, and revenge it has produced when it has met with disrespect or slighting; in its grief when its fuel and supplies are taken away; in its anxious thoughts and cares about others’ praise, and its eager scrounging for it and pursuit of it; in the storm of commotion and disturbance this wind has raised when the tide of applause has run another way; and in the complacency and delight it has found in drinking from a full stream of others’ esteem, chewing the cud and turning over in the mind the praise of men. But that is enough on the inward workings of pride.

(2) The outward expressions of pride. These appear first of all:

First, in speech: London has been grossly guilty of boasting and vainglory. What company could you enter, almost, without finding many boastful spirits? Some have foamed out the shame of their own praise in lofty phrases and direct self-commendation. They had no regard to God’s glory, to vindicating themselves, to setting an example, or to stirring others up (in such cases it may be lawful and even a duty to do it, modestly and sparingly); they did it only to be well thought of and admired. Others have dribbled out their own praises more slyly and indirectly, but a Christian with eyes and a brain could easily see that the drift and aim of the talk was self, and a silent begging for a good opinion. It is as if someone should say, “Please, friends, think a little better of me. Please rate me higher in your esteem; for to tell the truth, by this I am letting you understand that I am a very worthy person.” We will find many very eager to declare their own goodness, but few faithful in speaking out the praises of God.

Yes, there have been many who ran themselves down, not so that they might fall in esteem, but so that they might rise. So some rotten-hearted hypocrites, as full of pride as they can hold, and some who are sincere in the main but too much like them, have spoken more meanly of themselves and more against themselves than anyone else would. And what was the design? Simply that they might be thought humble. So in these self-commendations of theirs they have taken care to speak of nothing but common infirmities, concealing their grosser faults. And they have spoken of those common infirmities in a mourning and complaining way, as though they felt them keenly, as though affected, afflicted, and burdened by them (as the humble, sincere Christian really is), so that they might be esteemed for their sensitivity to small faults. Then they have taken care to do it, not before the stricter, more severe, and sharp-sighted Christians who would quickly have sniffed out their pride, but before those they regarded as the most tender and charitable people, who were ready on this account to raise them higher in esteem, or before weaker Christians, who are ready to confess more evil of themselves.

And when they have spoken against themselves in this way, they have not really thought so; they have thought the opposite. They have spoken that way so that they might be contradicted and praised to their faces. If they had thought such words would lower them in esteem, they would have held their peace; but because they supposed that running themselves down might most effectively promote esteem and draw out a good word, they used it. Proud hypocrites speak ill of themselves so that they may be thought humble. They cannot bear to be humble; they care nothing for the grace, indeed they hate it; yet they want to be thought to have it, because it promotes esteem. They love the reward of humility but care nothing for humility itself. They love humility in others, because such people will stoop to them; but they do not love humility in themselves, for they will stoop to no one.

In the same way, out of a secret design of pride, some have also run others down behind their backs, so that they might be thought to surpass those whom they could correct and find fault with. They have labored to bring others down so that they might set themselves up. And they have had the same proud design in praising others to their faces and exalting them in words above themselves. This came not from any real esteem they had for them above themselves, but only from a wish to draw out a commendation from them.

Such expressions of pride have been found among those who profess religion, and they have been more hidden. But I will now speak of the grosser and more open expressions, which have been general in the city. We read of the pride of the daughters of Jerusalem in Isaiah 3:16: “They were haughty, and walked with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they went, and making a tinkling with their feet.” And what was it they were proud of? See Isaiah 3:18-25: “Their ornaments, their cauls, their tires, their chains, their bracelets, their mufflers, their tablets, their headbands, their rings, their jewels, their changeable suits of apparel,” and the like. And has there not been this pride in London? Were not the daughters of London like the daughters of Zion in pride and haughtiness? Was there any place in England that could show such pride of apparel as London could show? And it was not women alone who were guilty of it. Was there any fashion, however outlandish and apish, that London did not immediately imitate? Who can count the cost that has been lavished on clothing and rich apparel? Some have pinched their bellies and their families to spend it on this lust.

This pride of apparel is very shameful and absurd. Clothes are the badge of apostasy, for they were not used until after the fall; that is why the Hebrew word that means clothing comes from a word meaning “he dealt falsely.” So it is as if a thief should be proud of his shackles, or any criminal of his mark of disgrace. At the least, the gaudy clothing of many people has shown the emptiness and frothiness of the mind within, and that they had nothing to set them off but their clothes.

I might also add the pride the daughters of London have taken in their beauty, though it is only skin-deep, and the body only a skinful of dirt, and the choicest beauty without discretion like a jewel hung in the ear or nose of a pig. And the Lord knows what monstrous and defiled and deformed insides most of those have had who have been so fair and adorned outwardly. Many in London have been proud of their fine clothes and fair faces, and others of their fine shops and stately houses. Pride has hung about their necks like a chain and covered them like a garment, instead of the clothing and ornament of humility, which in God’s sight is of such great price.

Now God is highly offended with the sin of pride. “God resisteth the proud” (1 Pet 5:5); that is, he sets himself, as it were, in battle array against them. “Pride goes before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov 16:18). Pride was one of Sodom’s sins (Ezek 16:49), and that city was burned with fire from heaven. The Scriptures speak of three cities that were burned for this sin of pride, among other sins: Sodom, Jerusalem, and Babylon. And may not London come in as a fourth? The boils and blisters and loathsome sores on the bodies of many when the plague was in London, and the burning of so much fuel of pride by the fire, seem to me a very loud reproof and rebuke to London for this sin.

11. An eleventh sin of London is fullness of bread, or intemperance in eating. This was another of the sins of Sodom. God fed London with the finest of the wheat and gave plenty of grain and meat and other provisions; but how they have abused plenty by their intemperance and luxury! Oh, the excessive feasting in the halls and private houses of those whose estates have been larger! What indulgence of the appetite there has been, as if self-denial regarding the appetite were no duty, or were an enemy to be shut out of doors along with the poor! What fussiness of palate, what daintiness many in London have had, so that air, earth, and sea had to be ransacked to please them, and even that would not do! What loathing they have had for ordinary food! Many good creatures of God had to be cut and mangled and spoiled to make them new dishes, which, however pleasing, have only spoiled their stomachs and bred diseases in their bodies. Some have not eaten much, but have been so choosy that hardly any food pleased them, and that not through sickness of body but through wantonness of mind. Others have been pleased with their food, and overpleased, and all their pleasure has been in it, “all whose God,” as the apostle speaks, “hath been their belly” (Phil 3:19). Such people, like the rich man in Luke 16:19, “have fared sumptuously and deliciously every day.”

Oh, the excessive cost some have spent on their tables daily! Oh, the excessive quantity of food some have devoured! Oh, the excessive time that has been wasted in pampering the flesh! What rioting and banqueting there has been daily in London, many feeding themselves without fear, as if gluttony were no sin at all! How many in the city have been like fed horses, or like fattened oxen, who, as the apostle James says, “have lived in pleasure and been wanton, and nourished themselves as in a day of slaughter” (Jas 5:5); and as it is said in Hosea 13:6, “According to their pasture so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted, therefore have they forgotten me.”

This kind of intemperance has so strangely turned many into brutes that they have practically degenerated into beasts, except that they are less useful than beasts. By it they have unfitted themselves for every kind of service, as if they had been born only to eat. And along with this, they have made themselves ready for the ruinous and slaughtering judgments that have come upon the City.

12. A twelfth sin of London is idleness. It follows from the last, except that idleness has been more widespread. This too was a sin of Sodom. I will not deny that many citizens of London were diligent in their callings; but how many idle vagrants were there in the City? How much idleness there was among many of the young, if they were not held in more strictly! And some broke loose and squandered stolen time, time that was not theirs to dispose of, however strictly they were kept. Moreover, what a bad example of idleness many heads of households set their children and servants! When masters were idle away from home, no wonder servants were idle at home; when mistresses were idle in their rooms, no wonder the kitchen followed suit.

Eating, drinking and clothing were necessary, of course, and called for some time; yet the excess of time spent on these things was, if nothing worse, no better than idle time. Many in the City, especially women, have spent so much of the morning in bed, if not sleeping then at least in idle, foolish daydreams, and so much time afterward in neat and elaborate dressing of their bodies, that they have had no time before the midday meal for prayer or reading, no time to dress their souls. Then, with the afternoon far spent in eating and drinking, the rest of the day has slipped away in paying visits or entertaining, where vain, idle, unprofitable things (if nothing worse) have been the chief, if not the only, subject of their conversation. And by the time they have refreshed themselves with food again at night, they have been too sleepy and unfit for prayer and the service of God. So many careless women in the City have lived in ease and idleness from one end of the week to the other, and from one end of the year to the other. But it seems to me that by his terrible things in London the Lord has spoken to them in much the same language he used in Isaiah 32:9-11: “Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear to my speech. Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones; strip ye, make ye bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.”

But I would not lay this sin of idleness on women alone. Many men have been more shamefully guilty, especially those who have wasted so much time in gambling (not to mention excess in eating and drinking and other time-consuming sins, which are rebuked in their proper place). Oh, the time many have spent in gambling! Some recreations that exercise the body may be lawful and even necessary at times, provided they do not steal away too much of a person’s time and affections. But for men to sit at their games as hard as scholars at their books: what reasonable plea can be made for such wicked idleness? This is how silver and gold and great estates have been consumed. And oh, the golden hours, the days and nights and precious time that have been lost in gambling! In this way some have run through everything they had, and after cutting such a high figure in the City, they have moved into the country to hide their shame. Some have taken to the highways, not to beg, but to do something far worse, which for some has had a dreadful end. And it is not only this kind of idleness that has brought poverty, but also the heedless, slothful spirit many in the City have shown in their callings. This has made them blemishes on the City and has helped to bring on our ruin.

13. A thirteenth sin of London is unmercifulness, another of Sodom’s sins: “She strengthened not the hands of the poor and needy” (Ezek 16:49). I will not blame the whole City for this sin, for the charity of London has been heard of throughout the land and throughout the world. Yet have not many of the great men of the City been guilty of unmercifulness? Though better able, they have been slower to contribute to the relief of those in distress. It has been a comfort to some who lost much in the fire that they had saved what they had given to the poor beforehand, by putting it out of the reach of moth, rust, thieves, or flames of fire. But oh, what hearts of marble some have had toward the poor! Whatever abundance they had beyond what they used themselves, they would as soon have parted with so many drops of their blood as with so many coins, even to help some of the needy and distressed members of Jesus Christ. They did not consider that the Lord Jesus is the heir of all things, and that whatever estate they had, they were only his stewards. Nor did they consider that relief of the needy is a debt, which man cannot demand of them but God can. And is it unjust if, for failing to pay God’s debts (which they owed to the poor out of their estates by virtue of God’s command), the Lord has dispossessed them of his houses, burned them with fire, and taken away part of the estates he gave them, because they used them no more for his glory?

14. A fourteenth sin of London is uncleanness, another sin of Sodom; their sin, indeed, was unnatural uncleanness. I would hope that this sin has been little known or practiced in the City. But fornication and adultery have been all too common. True, this sin has not been committed here with the boldness and shamelessness found elsewhere. The harlot’s brazen forehead has not been so general in London, nor have people declared their iniquity like Sodom. But let the consciences of many Londoners say whether they have not been secretly guilty of this sin. Would it not be a shame even to tell of the debauchery and wantonness and private lewdness that have been committed in London? Suppose that in all the churches still standing the sin of uncleanness were rebuked, and that everyone, men and women alike, who had actually been guilty of it were driven by an inward sting of conscience to leave the place at once, as those who accused the woman taken in adultery were once driven out at the words of our Savior. What a stir there would be in some churches! What an emptying of some pews, what a clearing of some aisles! And how few would be left in some places!

Suppose God put a visible mark on the foreheads of all the adulterers in the City of London, as he put a mark on Cain after he was guilty of murder. Would not many who now walk about very demurely, with an air of great innocence, go about with blushes on their cheeks? Would not many stay indoors and hide their faces, never venturing out except at night? Or if they went out by day, would they not shuffle through the streets, hating the fashion of little hats and the court style of wearing them on the back of the head, and get hats with wider brims instead, the better to cover their brows? And would not many unsuspected and seemingly modest women also have their cheeks stained vermilion when their husbands or friends searched their faces? Would not many of them walk about in thick hoods and wear deep forehead cloths all the time, as if they suffered from a perpetual headache, to hide their shame from the eyes of others?

This sin is so nasty and filthy that, whatever swinish pleasure is found in committing it, those who are guilty are usually ashamed to have it known, unless their brow is made of brass. The holy and jealous eye of God has seen them in their filth; their secret sins are set in the light of his countenance, and this above all should make them ashamed. “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4), and this should make them afraid.

I have heard of the haunts of Smithfield and the walks of Moorfields, where too many from the City have resorted under the shadow of the wings of night for these deeds of darkness. The words and signs such lewd persons have used to signal their intentions to one another I know nothing of. The many brothels around London that go under the name of alehouses have, by report, had too many customers. And if the constables had been as zealous at other times as they were when the strict search was on in the City to break up those conventicles, they might possibly have found more of that coat and tribe who ought to have set a better example.

There may not have been public brothels in London, as in other cities of the world; yet have not some made their own houses little better, some men bringing in their whores practically in public view? And of the other sex, some have enticed the eye and invited courtship by openly wearing their breasts bare and by their wanton dress and manner, and afterward have basely prostituted their bodies to the lusts of filthy ruffians. Oh, the boiling, burning lusts that have been in London! Oh, the wanton eyes and looks! The uncleanness of the imagination, and the secret self-pollution! The obscene and filthy talk! The toying and lustful dalliance! And the gross acts of uncleanness that God has witnessed every day in London! This sin of uncleanness debases the spirit, which was first made in God’s own image. It defiles both soul and body, which should be the temple of the Holy Spirit. It makes people unfit for communion with a holy God, who is of such pure eyes that he cannot approve the least iniquity, much less this one, which is so gross. And more than that, it greatly provokes him to anger and jealousy.

This may be one sin that has brought such fearful judgments down on the City. We read of twenty-four thousand men who fell in one day by the plague for the sin of fornication (Num 25:9); and have not many thousands of London’s inhabitants and houses fallen for this sin? It is said of the Israelites, “They have made ready their heart like an oven, while they lie in wait; their baker sleepeth all night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire” (Hos 7:6). Have not the hearts of many in London been like an oven for lust, and they themselves like bakers putting in fuel and stirring it up? While they have lain in wait without an immediate opportunity to satisfy their lusts, they have seemed to be asleep. Yet no sooner has the morning light of a fit occasion presented itself to their adulterous eyes than their adulterous hearts have burned within them and broken out into a flaming fire in the actual commission of the sin.

And has this been the practice only of the Court and the Westminster side? Has not the cursed leaven of this common sin of the times spread into the City as well? Therefore the Lord too has made ready his wrath as in a hot oven. Like a baker, he has seemed to sleep while he lay in wait and delayed to execute his judgments; yet in the morning of his great provocation by this and other sins, his anger has broken out like a flaming fire. From it was kindled the fire that has burned the greater part of London to the ground. When the Israelites were like “fed horses in the morning, every one neighing after his neighbor’s wife,” the Lord spoke to them in his wrath: “Shall not I visit for these things? shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?” (Jer 5:8-9).

15. A fifteenth sin of London is drunkenness. This sin has been more visible and open. I believe that hardly any nation under heaven has proportionally more taverns and alehouses than England, and no place in England so many as London and its surrounding districts. Of all the many thousands of these houses, I believe there has hardly been one that could not give many instances of this sin, besides the many private houses where it has been practiced. How men have risen early in the morning to follow strong drink, and continued until night, till wine inflamed them (Isa 5:11)! “Come ye,” say they, “and I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant” (Isa 56:12). The corners and beds full of vomit, the reeling about the streets, the contentions and wrangling, the wounds without cause, the redness of the eyes and the like have been all too evident a demonstration of men tarrying too long at the wine and disordering themselves with excessive drinking (Prov 23:29-30).

To be overtaken by drunkenness is a great sin, which makes people more brutish than their very horses; for a horse will not drink beyond its measure unless it is forced to with a clamp on its nose. If no one in the City had let themselves be dosed with a cup beyond their measure unless clamped by the nose, I suppose they would have been as sober as their horses. And by this they would have prevented many disorders of body and worse disorders of mind, and, worst of all, much dishonor to God as well as to themselves, which excess of this kind has caused. But for people to pursue this sin and make it their trade and common practice; to delight in it, and to look for their god and chief happiness in a cup of wine or ale; to grow into mighty men at drinking, able to go far past the limit without reeling; to entice others into it, and even to force them to drink healths (that ungodly practice), which would not promote another’s health in the least and was likely to destroy their own through the excess such practices bring in; to take pleasure in drinking others under the table, and afterward to glory in their shame and wickedness: this is a sin so far beyond brutish that it becomes devilish. It greatly provokes the Lord to pour out his fury like water on the places where such sins are committed.

And has not London been guilty of this sin of drunkenness, with everything that aggravates it? Have not some of London’s magistrates been guilty, who should have punished this sin, and too many ministers, who should have rebuked it both by word and by an example of sobriety? For such men to be seen drunk and reeling in the streets was very shameful and a great provocation. Have not the recent judgments in some way pointed to this sin? The dizziness of head and the staggering of those struck by the plague, the flaming of the heart of the City, and the reeling of the houses as the fire tumbled them to the ground: to my mind these were a rebuke of the dizziness and reeling, through the streets and houses, of those who had inflamed and disordered themselves with excessive drinking.

16. A sixteenth sin of London is perverting justice. This is a sin that provokes God: when “none calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth”; when men “make to themselves crooked paths, and there is no judgment in their goings”; yes, when “judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off, and truth is fallen in the streets, and equity cannot enter”; when “truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey,” as the prophet speaks (Isa 59). When magistrates are “lovers of gifts, and followers after rewards”; when “they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them,” then the Lord cries, “Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies” (Isa 1:23-24).

I cannot charge London deeply with this sin, since I have not myself been present much in its courts of justice; and I would hope that justice has had its place here as much as in most cities in the world. But I read what the Lord says concerning Jerusalem: “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now and know, and seek in the broad places thereof if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth, and I will pardon it” (Jer 5:1). And I also consider God’s dreadful judgments on the City of London, by which the glory of the City’s magistracy and government is so badly stained. When I put these together, I would submit it to inquiry: Has there not been a failure and perverting of justice in the City? Have not bribes and rewards blinded eyes, and has not the edge of the law been turned against those who do well instead of those who do evil? Have not the fatherless and the widow been sent away weeping to their heavenly Father to complain of injustice? This is not a time to cover faults but to confess and forsake them, lest unavoidable ruin come upon us when it will be too late.

17. A seventeenth sin of London is covetousness. How universally this sin has reigned in the City! It may almost be said of London, as it was of Jerusalem, “From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness” (Jer 6:13). Those who have been free of gluttony, drunkenness, adultery and similar costly sins have, on the other hand, given themselves to the sin of covetousness. I do not accuse everyone; but oh, how nearly universal this sin has been among tradesmen! It has shown itself both in their getting and in their keeping of riches.

(1) In getting. What eager desire there has been for the world, and for gaining an estate by trade! What study and consultation, what racking of brains and torturing of wits, to find the best way of thriving in the world! What earnest pursuits and laborious efforts there have been: rising early and sitting up late, wearying body and mind all day long, eating the bread of anxiety and mixing their drink with worry, crowding every hour with worldly business. Their own health has been disregarded, and the worship of God neglected in the families of these worldlings, and all to scrape together a little worldly wealth, which some have missed despite all their efforts. And if they have gained it, have they not remained poorer in contentment than when they were poorer in estate? For as their estates have grown, so have their desires, and they have been further from satisfaction. As they have enlarged their shops and trades and wealth has flowed in on them, they have enlarged their desires like hell and, like the grave, have never said, “It is enough.” When they have added bag to bag and house to house, more cares and fears, and sometimes piercing sorrows, have come with their gains; but they have been far from finding the contentment and comfort in their riches that they looked for.

(2) In keeping. This covetousness has shown itself in keeping what they have gotten. Keeping, I say, for covetous people have had little heart to spend what they have scraped together, even on necessary uses. They have had wealth, but not the use of it. It has been to them like treasure in a chest whose key they have lost, or like another man’s money in their keeping, which they must not touch. Whatever abundance they had in the bag and in the coffer, their families have gone without. The table has been stingy; back and belly have been pinched; they have lived more meanly than people of a lower station. The poor might starve at their doors: there was no pity for others in want and misery, and the least pity of all for themselves. While they saved for fear of being in want later, they were in want all along while they were saving. And perhaps at last they have lost what they were keeping, to the inexpressible grief, and perhaps the breaking, of hearts so set on these things.

This sin of covetousness has had a deeper root in some, has had too much footing in most, and in all has been very heinous and abominable before God. Scripture calls this sin idolatry and brands the covetous with the name of idolaters (Col 3:5; Eph 5:5). It is idolatry of the heart, forbidden in the first commandment. Whatever we chiefly love, we make into a god for ourselves. If it is the world, then we make the world our god, which is inconsistent with true love for God the Father, the only true God: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). This sin of covetousness is hateful to God and provokes his wrath: “For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth and smote him” (Isa 57:17).

Has not God struck London with the plague and the fire for this iniquity of covetousness, among other iniquities? London was eagerly chasing after the world, everyone minding and seeking their own interest, with no regard for the interest of God’s glory and kingdom, and no care for their souls’ interest and salvation, for which their worldly business would allow no time. Did not the Lord then send a plague to stop their trade, and give them time to seek him and make their peace with him in their retirement, time they could not, or rather would not, find before? And when, once the plague was a little over, they went back to their trades more eagerly than before, to make up if they could what they had lost by that interruption, did not the Lord send a fire to consume much of what they had set their hearts on, and write Vanity in large, legible letters on this idol that so many had worshiped? Let London consider this sin of covetousness and lay it to heart.

18. The eighteenth sin of London is extortion; in some, covetousness has expressed itself more grossly in this way. I will not discuss lending at interest in general here. But the extortionate interest some have taken from those in want, the taking of interest upon interest, and the grinding of the faces of the poor in their distress, is no doubt a great sin and very offensive to God. How many extortioners there have been in London who have enriched themselves by impoverishing others! Panting after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, they have lent them money, not to help them, but to take advantage of them, so that without mercy they might snatch away everything they had, not leaving them so much as a bed to lie on. So some have been like lions for cruelty and like evening wolves to the poor, tearing their flesh from their bones and keeping their very bones to gnaw in the morning, as the prophet speaks (Zeph 3:3). This sin of extortion was one of the abominations the prophet Ezekiel listed for which God was so highly offended with Jerusalem: “Thou hast taken usury and increase, and hast greedily gained of thy neighbor by extortion, and hast forgotten me” (Ezek 22:12). For this and the other sins mentioned there, it is said, “Therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath” (Ezek 22:31).

To this sin of extortion I may add several other ways many in the City have had of getting estates. Some may argue for their lawfulness, and because they are so common and profitable, the sin is little noticed. But the Lord has been contending with the whole City. He has struck tradesmen with a general blow, indeed one blow upon another, and has trodden their trade under his feet, as if he were offended with something in it. It seems to me that they should wake up, open their eyes, search impartially, and labor to find out whatever it is that offends him, whatever apparent disadvantage may come to them by it. And if they will not listen, God can take away what remains, as he has already taken a great part, and so force them to a sense of their sin.

One sinful way of getting estates, and one I am convinced displeases God, is engrossing and monopolizing commodities, which many in London have done: getting all the goods of a particular kind into their own hands, so that they can make their own market and set their own price on them. If they sold them as cheaply as they otherwise would, or as cheaply as others do when the goods are shared among many hands (as possibly some may), I could not condemn the practice. But when, by getting the whole supply into their hands, they hoist and raise the price far beyond its just value, force people to pay it, and do this only to enrich themselves, I dare confidently affirm that it is unlawful. My reason is that they thereby prefer a lesser good to a greater: the enriching of themselves and their families before the more public good of making the commodity cheaper for the commonwealth.

They may say that the injury the buyers will suffer will be very small and inconsiderable, since there are so many of them, while the good they themselves will gain will be great, and they will be better able to do good. I answer that no one ought to do the least injury to reap the greatest advantage. It is absolutely unlawful to do evil that good may come of it, and the damnation of those who do so will be just (Rom 3:8). Consequently, a greater injury will come to themselves than to those they injure; indeed, the injury will be greater than the good they obtain. As for their being better able to do more good, I believe that such people, if they spend such gains at all, are readier to spend them on their lusts than to lay them out on charitable uses. I have not heard that the greatest monopolizers in London have been the most charitable people.

If I were better acquainted with the mysteries of the trades in the City, I fear I might find more than one mystery of iniquity among them. If the Lord would put it into the hearts of magistrates and citizens to look into the trades, to consider how equitable they are, and to take some course for correcting the abuses in them, it might be one way to obtain a kinder look from heaven; and the Lord might revive the trade of London, which is now dying and sinking to the ground.

19. A nineteenth sin of London is lying. It is said of Nineveh that it was a city full of lies (Nah 3:1). Oh, the lies there have been in London! Who can count them? Lies in the streets, loud lies, cried aloud: the false news we hear every day. Lies in private rooms, secret lies: false tales whispered in the ear. Lies in the shop, trading lies: lies told in buying and selling. Obliging lies, which some tell to do their friends a kindness. Mischievous lies, which some tell to do another an injury. We read of some “that bend their tongue like their bow for lies, that will not speak the truth, but teach their tongue to speak lies” (Jer 9:3, 5). How many liars there have been in London! What age is free from this sin? Children have learned to lie as soon as they have learned to speak. What house has been free of it? How guilty tradesmen have been of lying, which some regard as a necessary part of their trade, without which they could not make a living! How many servants have excused themselves and one another with lies when they have done wrong!

But of all lies, mischievous lies have been the worst, which some have invented to injure their neighbor. Such lies are more directly begotten by the devil, the father of lies, and such liars are his truest offspring. Yet in a sense all lies are mischievous lies, for they do mischief to the one who tells them. Even the obliging liar cannot do his friend as much kindness by his lie as he does injury to himself. What! Will a man stab himself to do his friend a favor? He who wounds his conscience does worse. He who gains in his trade by a lie loses more than he gains: a bag of gold is not to be compared with inward peace and the favor of God (which is better than life), and these are lost by this sin.

Surely the Lord, being a God of truth, is greatly offended by this sin of lying. “God delights,” says Solomon, “in them that deal truly, but lying lips are an abomination to him” (Prov 12:22). Lying was one sin of Israel for which their land mourned (Hos 4:2-3). And God threatens to give “all liars their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Rev 21:8). It seems to me that this one passage should make all liars tremble. And is not this one sin of which some professing Christians in the City have also been guilty, to the shame of their profession, and one for which the Lord has sent the fire to burn down the City, to awaken us to flee from this sin as we would escape the future fire of hell?

20. Another sin of London is cheating and defrauding. This sin has been the offspring of covetousness and the companion of lying. How common it has been among tradesmen! Many have grown so used to it that it would have been as easy to persuade the Ethiopian to change his skin as to persuade them to give up their cheating. They have regarded it as essential to their trade, or at least necessary to their profits; some have even pleaded that they must do it to earn a living for themselves and their families. But there is no necessity for any sin. Duties are necessary, but sins are never necessary. Gain gotten by sin is like the gain of a garment that has the plague in it: it may bring warmth for the present, but it may also quickly bring sickness and death. And if cheating brings gain into the purse, it immediately brings the plague into the heart, and will quickly bring the pain and punishment of hell.

To defraud another in business is only a more covert way of stealing. It is as lawful to take a purse on the highway as to take a shilling by fraud in the shop; the difference lies only in degree, for the nature of the sin, which is theft, is the same in both. And as the Lord has expressly forbidden this sin, so he has threatened to avenge it: “That no man go beyond or defraud his brother” (not only in a greater thing, but) “in any matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such” (1 Thess 4:6). The various ways tradesmen have had of defrauding would take too long for me to speak of, nor am I skilled enough to understand them. Falsifying weights and measures is a gross one, a sin practiced among the Jews of old, which God threatens to punish them for: “Ephraim is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand” (Hos 12:7). And both their sin and God’s anger are set forth in Micah 6:10-13: “Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the houses of the wicked, and the scant measure which is abominable? shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights? For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate, because of thy sins.”

And was it not so with London? Did they not falsify weights and measures, falsify goods, speak falsely about their prices, and take unconscionable profits, all while professing to treat kindly the very customers they most exploited? But even if I could, I would not lay open the cunning ways some have found of defrauding and overreaching, lest anyone learn from the very rebuke of the sin and be enticed to practice it, as I have heard some have done.

Now those who have gotten their wealth by defrauding and overreaching their brothers bring themselves into such a snare of the devil that very few ever get out; the rest are dragged by him through it into hell. For bare grief over this sin is not enough to obtain a pardon; restitution is necessary. They must refund, they must restore what they have gotten wrongfully, either to the persons themselves or to the poor, if they are able; and if not, as much as they have. Otherwise they cannot be saved. No salvation came to Zacchaeus until he was resolved to restore what he had wrongfully gained (Luke 19:8-9). God strikes his hand at dishonest gain (Ezek 22:13), and I believe this is one sin for which God has struck London.

21. The twenty-first sin of London is prodigality and lavish spending. Some have spared too much through covetousness; others have spent too much through prodigality. Liberality is a great virtue and bountiful charity an excellent grace, which London has not lacked; but prodigality is a great sin. So some have spent beyond their station, lavishing their estates on their tables, their houses and their clothes. But the worst prodigality has been what people have squandered in satisfying their lusts, in drunkenness, gambling, whoring and the like. And those who have lavishly spent what was not their own at all, but what they had taken up on other people’s credit, have been the most grossly guilty of this sin.

To this sin of prodigality and lavishness I may also refer the sin of excessive mirth and revelry that has been in London. There is a harmless mirth that is lawful, and there is a spiritual cheerfulness that is the duty of Christians, though in times of great sin and of affliction for God’s people, sackcloth and mourning become Christians, and some more carnal expressions of joy should be largely given up. But I am speaking of the mirth of those who have had the least ground for mirth of anyone, namely the wicked, to whom no peace or joy belongs while they remain in that state. For them to be so excessively merry and jovial and frolicsome, showing it in profane, obscene and scurrilous jesting; in music, singing and dancing; in ranting, roaring and carousing; and in many wasteful and lavish ways of spending, while the Church is in sackcloth and lies bleeding, as too many in London have done: surely God has been offended at this. He has been provoked to send down his judgments to change London’s cheer, and in this way to put into mourning those who were so averse to it.

Had they foreseen the plague, and how many of them would fall by it, surely it would have dampened their mirth. Had they foreseen the burning of the City of London, and their own houses falling in the fire, surely their laughter would have been turned into heaviness. These judgments they could not foresee. But they might have foreseen a future judgment far more dreadful, and that should have pressed sorrow upon them, so that by repentance they might, if possible, avoid and escape it. “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness” (Jas 4:9). Such mourning, if it is mourning for sin, might be a means of preventing future miseries and eternal woe and weeping. Others have reason to mourn for the miseries that will come upon them: “Go to now ye rich men, weep and howl, for the miseries that shall come upon you” (Jas 5:1). But for profane, wicked people to sing and rejoice on the very brink of the grave and of hell is very unreasonable, and it aggravates their other sins.

22. The twenty-second sin of London is envy. This sin was found not only in women, who envied others who outdid them in beauty, in clothes and dress, and in such trifles, but also in men, who envied those in the same trade who had better houses and shops, more customers and more wealth than they had. As Hesiod says, “Potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman; beggar envies beggar, and singer singer.”

Yes, this envy was found among many ministers too, who envied others with better gifts, more learning, greater applause and more hearers than themselves. There has been a spirit among us that lusted to envy (Jas 4:5). Besides the great torment it brings to the spirit where it reigns, it is a very great provocation to the Lord.

23. The twenty-third sin of London is slander and backbiting, which has followed from the last. The ninth commandment has been broken exceedingly in London, especially in the private way of bearing false witness against one’s neighbor and wounding his reputation with a slanderous tongue. Some have invented lies and raised slanders that they knew in their consciences to be false; others have picked up slanders and readily believed them without any real proof. You will find this sin set out in Jeremiah 9:4-5, with a warning to beware of such people. London has been full of backbiters and talebearers, and too many who profess religion have been guilty of this sin. Few have met backbiters with an angry face, which, as the wind drives away rain, would have driven them out of sight. I might add here the hatred of one another that there has been in London (much of it through slander), the rivalry that has risen from hatred, the wrath that has risen from rivalry, and the wrath of God that has arisen from these and the other works of the flesh spoken of in Galatians 5:19-20.

24. The twenty-fourth sin of London is murmuring, and not only in want and under losses and hardships, but also in fullness and plenty. Many farmers in the country have grumbled at the plenty and cheapness of grain; many tradesmen in the city have grumbled at the plenty of the goods they dealt in. However great a public and unspeakable mercy such plenty is, it brought them less private advantage, and private advantage was what they chiefly cared about. Some in their murmuring have even wished for a plague, so that the survivors might have better trade. And I have heard that a fire has been wished for too, to take away the glut of such goods, so that what remained might fetch a higher price. Is it any wonder, then, if God has sent the plague and the fire that some called for by such murmuring words? The Israelites in the wilderness were plagued for their murmuring; and those of Korah’s murmuring company who were not swallowed up with him were consumed by fire from heaven.

25. The twenty-fifth and last sin of London that I shall speak of is carnal complacency, another of Sodom’s sins. Of the Sodomites it is said, “In the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded: but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:28-29). Though London had provoked God so highly by so many sins, how complacent its people were before his judgments broke out upon them! They ate and drank, they bought and sold, and all the rest. They sat at ease and put far from them the evil day (Amos 6). They were still and at rest, little expecting such changes as have come upon them, and taking little care to prevent them. They were complacent, trusting in arms of flesh, broken reeds that have always failed.

As a cause of some people’s complacency I might add here their presumptuous confidence about future events, which belong to God alone to know beforehand. Some have taken it upon themselves to settle such things so absolutely, as if they had looked into the book of God’s decrees or had an infallible revelation from him of what would come to pass. Oh, the good days some have looked for, on the presumption of what they had no ground for! Many had great expectations of the fall of Antichrist and Babylon in the year 1666, and of other events, setting times that God has not clearly revealed. This is an encroachment on God’s prerogative, and I believe a greater provocation than such people are aware of. This may be one reason why London has fallen instead of Babylon, in this very year of such expectation and presumption.

By now the reader may be as weary of reading as I am of thinking and writing about London’s sins. But how wearied the Lord has been with bearing them! How he has been pressed under their weight, “as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves” (Amos 2:13)! If, after reading of London’s judgments, you also consider London’s provocations, you must acknowledge that God is righteous in punishing London no more than its people deserved for these sins.

London Punished Less Than She Deserved

2. God’s righteousness will further appear if we consider that he has punished London less than her iniquities deserved.

(1) God might deservedly have punished London with more dreadful judgments here, both of the same kind and of another kind.

[1] God might deservedly have punished London worse in the same kind.

First, in the judgment of the plague. It was a dreadful plague indeed, but God could have made it more dreadful. Where he shot one arrow, he might have shot a hundred. He visited many families; he might have visited every family and swept every house with the broom of destruction. Though so many fell, I believe that five out of every six of the inhabitants of London were preserved. God might have taken the five and left only one alive. Yes, it might have been said of London, as it was of Israel, “The Virgin of Israel is fallen, she shall rise no more; the City that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred” (Amos 5:2-3). God might have made every hundred who died of the plague a thousand. He might have sent his arrows after all the inhabitants of London who had gone into the country and struck them down wherever he found them. Or he might have met them on their return home and commissioned Death to seize them as soon as they came through their doors. He might have emptied the City of London by the plague, so that every house had dead bodies lying in it and no one to bury them. He might have made our plague wonderful, fearful, and of long continuance.

We who have survived so great a mortality have reason to say that it might deservedly have been greater, and that for our more heinous sins we deserved to fall as much as, or more than, the thousands who have gone down into the pit. Surely “it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed” (Lam 3:22). He was merciful in sparing us; he would have been righteous if he had destroyed us.

Think about it, you who are alive and have escaped. How fearful the plague would have been if it had come home to your houses! You were afraid to hear of other people’s houses being struck and shut up; what would you have been like if it had come through your doors? You were afraid when others were struck with the disease; what would you have been like if you had been struck yourselves? Sinners, what would you have done if the arrow had pierced through your liver, if you had been struck down under such guilt and wrath? What if, when you had such a plague of sin in your hearts, you had had the plague of pestilence in your bodies? What if, when you were so rotten, corrupt and defiled inwardly, you had had boils and blisters and running sores outwardly? What if, when your conscience was so full of guilt, your body had been filled with this disease? In a word, if when you had the marks of hell and damnation on your souls you had had the marks of inevitable death on your bodies, oh, the dread that would have seized you! The judgment of the plague might have been worse for you. By this time you might have spent more than a year in hell among devils and damned spirits. By this time you might have grown used to those torments, which even so you could not have endured, and yet must have endured forever, without any possibility of deliverance, forever.

Many of you who have escaped still have your families unbroken, while other whole families have been swept away. Suppose your dear wife had fallen, or your promising children had been nipped by death in the very bud, and your families had been maimed; the judgment would have been far heavier on you. No one can say that God might not righteously have punished London more severely by the plague.

Second, God might also have punished London more severely by the fire. The greater part of the City has fallen; it might have been the whole. Most of the City within the walls has been consumed; the flames might have burst out through all the gates and consumed all the suburbs too. All the goods might have been burned with the houses, and all the inhabitants with their dwellings.

Though the fire burned dreadfully, it began at one end and advanced so slowly that most of the inhabitants of London had time to remove themselves and the choicest of their goods. Some livelihood was left, and materials for future trade.

Suppose the fire had come so suddenly, or had been kindled in so many places, that there was no possibility of removing anything except the people themselves. Suppose all the silver and gold and rich plate of the City had been melted in this fire, and all the wares and merchandise, all the clothes, beds and household goods had been turned to ashes. Suppose the many thousands of families who have been turned out of their houses had been turned out of everything, quite stripped of all their substance, so that nothing remained to them for necessary use. That would have been very heavy indeed.

Alas! What would they have done? Where would they have gone for relief? Would the Court have supplied them? Could the country have helped and maintained so many, when it is so impoverished itself that in many places people are hardly able to live? Could they have hoped for relief from foreign nations? Is not almost the whole world our enemy? Is charity so warm abroad? Alas! What would they have done? Must not many of them have wasted away in their want and starved under hedges for lack of proper provisions? That would have been dreadful indeed.

Or suppose they had hauled their goods out of London away from the fire, and the whole City had been burned down with all the suburbs, and no houses had been left standing anywhere nearby. What would they have done with their goods? Where would they have put them? How could they possibly have carried on their trades? Where could they have put themselves? How could they have lived through this cold winter season? Could they have put up shelters at once, fit to live in, which would have protected them from the harm of the weather? Where would they have found materials, when everything was burned?

Alas! What would they have done? Would not their goods have been spoiled by lying out in the open? Would not they themselves, who were used to such soft living, soon have fallen sick and died in the fields? Would not thousands have perished from cold? And what provision could they have had for food and other necessities? Besides, would they not have been a prey to thieves and cutthroats? Would not many of their enemies, who laughed at the fall of the City, have rejoiced much more, and seized the chance to come upon them in their defenseless state and butcher them without mercy?

But suppose the fire that began at one corner had been kindled at every gate at the same time, while all the inhabitants were asleep in their houses, and they had been shut in by flames with no possibility of escape. How dreadful the fire would have been then! Suppose that when they woke in the morning they had seen the smoke rising all around them and the fire drawing near; that both ends of a street had been on fire together, with them in the middle; and that along with the roaring of the fire they had heard a greater roaring of the people who were burning with the houses. Oh, the pitiful looks! Oh, the horrible shrieks of women and children! Oh, the dreadful amazement and confusion there would have been in such a place and such a case! To be burned alive is dreadful. But think what tortures there would have been in the spirits of guilty sinners who had not made their peace with God, who had slept away the harvest and the day of grace, who had made no provision for death and eternity! The noise and roaring outside would have been nothing to the lashing and tearing within them. The fire in their houses would have been small compared with the fire in their consciences, and with the flames of hellfire, which, had they been awakened, they would have seen just before them.

This judgment of the fire might have been more dreadful than it was. People have escaped; goods and wealth have largely been saved; houses are standing to receive them; trade goes on. God might have punished London more severely in the same kind.

[2] God might have punished London more severely with other kinds of judgments.

First, he might have brought on them, and on the whole land, the sword of a foreign enemy, as he did on Jerusalem and the land of Judea for their sins. Since this is set out so movingly by the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 4:15-31, I will set it before your eyes:

“A voice declareth from Dan, and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim, make ye mention to the nations; behold, publish against Jerusalem, that watchers come from a far country, and give out their voice against the cities of Judah: as keepers of the field they are against her round about, because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the Lord. Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart. My bowels, my bowels, I am pained at my very heart, my heart maketh a noise within me, I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried, for the whole land is spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet? I beheld, and all the cities were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger; for thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; for this shall the land mourn, and the heavens above be black. The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and the bowmen, they shall go into the thickets, and climb up upon the rocks; every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein. And when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thyself with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting; in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers shall despise thee, they will seek thy life: for I have heard a voice, as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child; the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself; that spreadeth forth her hands, saying, Woe is me now, for my soul is wearied because of murderers.”

This might have been the judgment, and these the complaints, of London and England, and that would have been worse than plague or fire. The plague reached many, but the sword might have reached all; the fire devoured houses, but the sword might have devoured the inhabitants. The Lord might have brought a foreign sword and open invasion. Or he might have given London up to a more secret and sudden butchery and massacre at the hands of cruel papists, as was feared. That would have been more dreadful than the massacre of the Protestants by the papists in Paris, because our numbers so far exceed those that were in that city.

Suppose bloody papists had come into our houses in the dead of night, with knives in their hands like those found in barrels after the fire. Suppose that, having set a watch at the end of every street, they had let no one escape, but cruelly slaughtered husband with wife, parents and children together, ripping up women with child, and sparing neither the silver hair nor the nursing baby. Suppose there had been a cry at midnight, “They are come!” but no possibility of fleeing from them or resisting them. Suppose that instead of heaps of stones and bricks at the top of every street there had been heaps of dead bodies, and the gutters had been made to run with blood. Surely this judgment would have been more dreadful than the plague or the fire that have been among us.

Second, God might have punished London with famine, which is a greater judgment than the plague or the sword. If the Lord had broken the whole staff of bread and cut off all provision of food from the many thousands of souls who lived in and around the City, how dreadful that would have been! Suppose a famine had been so severe in London that people were forced to eat one another and their own flesh, as happened in Samaria and Jerusalem. Suppose that, instead of the houses of London, God had made the people the fuel of the fire in this judgment, as is threatened in Isaiah 9:19-20: “Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened; and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire, no man shall spare his brother; and he shall snatch on his right hand and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and not be satisfied; they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arms.” If London had been forced by hunger to eat the flesh of their own arms and the fruit of their own bodies, oh, what a dismal face there would have been in the City! How death would have been chosen rather than life, in the pain of gnawing hunger, a pain we cannot even conceive! Those who die of the plague or are slain by the sword would be counted happy compared with those who live under such a judgment.

[3] Lastly, the righteousness of God in the judgments he has inflicted on London appears in this: instead of plague and fire on earth, he might have punished its people with the plagues and fire of hell, which such sins as we have listed have abundantly deserved. Tyre and Sidon, now in hell, and Sodom and Gomorrah, under the vengeance of eternal fire, were not guilty of such sins as London was guilty of.

And what are plagues on the body here, compared with plagues on the soul hereafter? What is a fire that burns down a city, compared with the fire of hell, which will burn the damned and never be quenched?

God has punished London no more than her iniquities deserved; God has punished London less than her iniquities deserved. Therefore, in speaking most terribly, he has answered most righteously.

3. Concerning the design of these judgments. What does God mean by this terrible voice, by speaking such terrible things in the City of London? The Lord has not only spoken but cried and shouted; he has lifted up his voice like a trumpet. And his voice has not been inarticulate and meaningless. It has had a meaning, and those who have an ear to hear may understand it. For as the voice of the Lord has cried in the City, so the voice of the Lord has cried to the City: “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, The man of wisdom shall see thy name, hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Mic 6:9).

Some take notice of the judgments themselves, and of their effects on themselves and their families. They talk about the plague: how many died of it, that they have lost such a relative, that such a friend or neighbor was struck with the sickness and died quickly. They talk about the fire: where it began, how it grew and prevailed, on what day such a street fell, where their houses were consumed, what they lost and how much they saved. And perhaps some speak of the hands of men who were suspected of kindling it and carrying it on. But few talk about the hand of God, which sent both plague and fire, or about what he means by such strange and dreadful judgments. The man of wisdom, however (that is, those who are wise), considers that these judgments did not spring out of the dust but were sent down from heaven. The wise see God’s name, and God’s hand, which has been stretched out upon London. They know that both plague and fire received their commission from the God of heaven; otherwise they could not have worked with such force and power.

They see God’s name, that is, the glorious attributes of his name displayed. God proclaimed his name before Moses when he made his goodness pass before him, and revealed himself to be “the Lord, the Lord God gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in lovingkindness, goodness and truth” (Exod 34:6). And God has proclaimed his name before London by bringing his judgments upon the City, and has declared himself to be the Lord, the Lord God, holy and jealous, a God who can be angry when much provoked, and yet righteous in the severest judgments he inflicts. A man of wisdom may see God’s name in London’s judgments. And as he may see power and righteousness in God’s name, so he may see grace and goodness in the name of God that has passed before the City. He may see and know that God has a gracious meaning and a design of good toward London in these judgments. He may see God’s name and hear God’s voice, and understand what it is that God speaks by the rod.

Oh, that London were this wise! Oh, that they would open their eyes and see God’s name, God’s hand so just and righteous, and also open their ears to hear God’s voice and understand God’s design, so gracious and so much for their good! Oh, that God would open the ears of London and bend them to the discipline of his judgments! Then, having lost friends and relatives by the plague and houses and goods by the fire, they would not lose the good of these judgments as well: the good that God intends for them, which is of another kind, yet of far greater value.

The question, then, is this: What does the Lord mean by the plague and by the fire in the City? What does he call for by this terrible voice, and what does he look for in London, so that these judgments may turn to their advantage?

The duties that God expects from London after such desolations by plague and fire are these.

1. God expects London to awake. London has been asleep; both the foolish and the wise virgins have been asleep. And when such a voice has come down in these judgments, revealed from heaven, crying in the midnight of their carnal complacency, Behold, the great God has come forth from his place and has entered London in fury, surely all should awake and arise and prepare to meet him, since no one can flee from him. God seemed to be asleep while he exercised so much patience toward London; his arm slept in his bosom. But now the Lord has been awakened by the loud cry of England’s and London’s sins. His arm has awakened and put on strength and vengeance.

Awake, then, O London, awake! Open your eyes, draw back your curtains, come out of your bed, look out of your windows. Apparitions! Apparitions! Strange sights to be seen! Look! Heaven is opened, and God has come down upon earth, clothed with garments of lightning. God has come down in his majesty and looks upon London with a terrible countenance. Behold the amazing terror of God in the late strange and portentous judgments. What! Do you not see him? Surely you are still fast asleep. Your eyes are closed; the veil is over them.

Awake, London, awake! Open your ears. Listen! Oh, the trumpet that has been sounding from heaven over the City, exceedingly loud! Oh, the thunderings of the terrible voice of the angry God! The voice of the Lord has been powerful and very dreadful. What! Can you sleep under such a noise? Surely you are dead asleep, dead in sin and complacency. What will awaken you, if these judgments do not awaken you? If a shrill, loud trumpet does not pierce your ears, will soft music get in? If the sound of cannons is not heard, can anyone expect pistols to be? If you can still sleep when the lion roars in your ears, will soft whispers awaken you? What will awaken you, if the loud voice of these judgments does not awaken you? The Lord called upon you before by his ministers and by his mercies; now he has shouted in your ears by his judgments.

Awake, London, awake! You have been roused out of your dwellings; surely you should be roused out of your complacency. What! Sleep while dying, dying of the plague and tumbling into the grave? What! Sleep while burning, burning in the fire and tumbling into desolation? What! Sleep in a storm, when winds are blowing and waves roaring, the sea pouring in and the ship sinking? “What meanest thou, O sleeper?” the heathen shipmaster could say in just such a case to Jonah (Jonah 1:5-6), when he lay fast asleep in the sides of the ship. “Arise, call upon thy God; if God will think upon us that we perish not.” And may I not say: What do you mean, O sleepy London? Have you not perceived the storm that has beaten so fiercely on your head? Do you not see that your ship is shattered and broken, that the sea is coming in at full force, and that you are in danger of sinking, and that quickly, unless some speedy course is taken to prevent it? And can you still sleep? Awake! Arise! Call upon your God; it may be that he will think upon us, so that we do not perish.

God calls upon sleepy sinners to awake. Suppose you were in the power of cruel enemies who had killed your husbands or wives or dear children and friends, and you did not know how soon they might fall upon you and cut your throats. Could you sleep complacently in the same house with such people?

You are under the power of tyrannical lusts, which are far worse enemies. You are under the reigning power of sin, which has brought the plague into the City, and by which some of you have been deprived of those relatives. And you do not know how soon sin may bring death upon yourselves: not only the first death but the second, not only temporal death but eternal, depriving you not only of life but of happiness, and of all hope of the least share in it forever. And yet can you sleep complacently with sin in your hearts, with such an enemy, such a viper, in your bosom?

When the fire was in London, I believe few of you could get much sleep for several nights together. When the fire was burning in your streets and burning down your houses, you could not sleep in your houses for fear that the fire would burn your persons too. Now the fire of lust is within you and burning within you. The fire of God’s anger is kindled above you and burning over you. The fire of hell, so dreadful and unquenchable, is burning beneath you. You are hanging over the burning lake by a twisted thread, which before long will untwist of itself, and which may, before you are aware, be suddenly cut or snapped apart; and then you must drop into the midst of the flames. Can you sleep under the guilt and power of sin when you are in such danger?

Awake, sinners, awake! God does not burn you immediately but warns you first; he burns your houses so that you might awake and escape a more dreadful fire. Awake, sinners! When will you awake? How often, how long, how loud must God call upon you before you will arise? “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Jesus Christ shall give thee life” (Eph 5:14). “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest” (Prov 6:10): what! Can you sleep any longer now? Was this not your tune long ago, when you were under the calls of the Word? And is it the same under the rod too? What will awaken you? Or when do you think you will be awakened, if you still lie down on the bed of complacency, love to slumber on the lap of pleasure, and after a brief start sleep more soundly than before?

Ministers have preached, and you have slept under their sermons; but when God has preached, surely you should awake. When Paul preached to Felix a sermon of judgment, Felix trembled. God has preached one sermon of judgment, no, two, and more feelingly than Paul could. Surely you should awake, and not drop off to sleep so soon just because God gives you a little respite to learn his sermon before he preaches the third, which may be your last and ruining sermon. If you do not awake at the sound of his judgments before you, you will awake at the feeling of his judgments upon you. If the plague and fire of London do not awaken you, you will be awakened by the plagues and fire of hell, which you will see and feel but not be able to flee from, as you could flee here if you were awakened now.

God calls upon sleepy sinners to awake, and God calls upon drowsy saints to awake. And was there not great need? Had not the Jonahs gone down into the sides of the ship and lain down on pillows? Were not the wise virgins turning foolish, sleeping with the rest, untrimmed and undressed? Had not a strange torpor and numbness lately seized the spirits of God’s own people? Had not the old vigor and activity that they once had in the ways and worship of God greatly abated and decayed before these judgments came upon London? Awake, then, you drowsy saints, awake! Put on your garments, which you have laid aside so that your nakedness is exposed. Shake yourselves from the dust that has covered and soiled your faces, and loosen the bands of sleep. God has been thundering. Your Father has been angry and displeased with you as well as with others. Your God has spoken in his jealousy, and he has spoken in his fury; he has spoken with a loud voice in righteousness and in judgment.

Awake, you children! Your Father is stirring and knocking and calling. Yes, he has entered your chamber and struck you on this side and that; and still will you not arise? He has been crying in your ears; now he is looking and listening to see whether you will cry in his, and what you will say and do to prevent the ruin of England, which he seems to be threatening. It is high time to awake out of sleep, for the utter destruction of the City and the nation may now be nearer than you believe or imagine. Awake, then! Put off your clothes of night and darkness, in which you have been sleeping, and put on your garments of light. Clothe yourselves with humility, gird yourselves with all your graces, and get to God’s knee. Hang upon his arm; put yourselves in the breach. It may be that the Lord will think upon us, that we perish not.

2. Now that the Lord has spoken by terrible things, he expects London to stand in awe of him. God’s judgments made this impression upon David: “My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments” (Ps 119:120). And see how the prophet Habakkuk behaved himself when God spoke with a terrible voice (Hab 3:2 and following): “O Lord, I have heard thy speech and was afraid; when God came down from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran, Selah; when the pestilence went before him, and burning coals went forth at his feet; when the nations were drove asunder, the everlasting mountains were scattered, and the perpetual hills did bow; when the tents of Cushan were in affliction, and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble: when God did ride upon horses, and his bow was made quite naked: when the sun and moon did stand still in their habitations, at the light of his arrows that went forth, at the shining of his glittering spear: when God did march through the land in his indignation, and walk through the sea with his horses, and did wound the head out of the house of the wicked, and did strike through habitations with his staves.” At this the prophet is “afraid, his belly trembled, his lips quivered at the voice, rottenness entered into his bones …” And now God has come down from heaven, the Holy One from Mount Zion, Selah. When the pestilence has gone before him, and burning coals at his feet; when the Lord has driven London apart, scattered its inhabitants, and made the stately buildings bow and fall, buildings so old that no one can remember their raising; when the tents of London have been in affliction, and the curtains of the City have trembled; when Death has been riding upon horses, and his bow has been made quite naked; when the heavens have been astonished at God’s judgments, and the sun and moon have hidden their heads in their habitations at the shining of his glittering spear; when the Lord has marched through the City in his indignation, has wounded the heads of so many of the wicked with his arrows, and has struck through so many habitations with his staves: oh, how London should tremble and quiver, and stand in awe of this glorious Majesty, at the voice of these terrible judgments!

Read and apply what the Lord speaks by the prophet Isaiah: “Hear ye that are far off, what I have done, and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners of Zion are afraid, fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites; who among us shall dwell with devouring fire? who among us shall inhabit everlasting burnings?” (Isa 33:13-14). And again: “Thine heart shall meditate terror; where is the scribe? where is the receiver? where is he that counted the towers?” (Isa 33:18).

Surely the sinners now in London should be afraid, and fearfulness should surprise the hypocrites, when God has sent so many of their number into the everlasting burnings of hell by the plague, and has consumed so many dwellings by such a devouring fire.

Tremble at this, you sinners, and be horribly afraid, all you workers of iniquity! God has come down with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. He has taken his weapons in his hand and has appeared in London as a furious enemy. Should this not make the sinners in the City quake, and strike dread into the spirits of the rebellious? When the Lord has spoken thus and done thus because of our sins, should not London, yes, all England, hear and fear, and do no more so wickedly?

Because God was patient before, you presumed. Because sentence against your evil works was not speedily executed, your hearts were hardened and set in your evil ways (Eccl 8:11). Because the Lord kept silence, you thought he was altogether such a one as yourselves (Ps 50:21). Perhaps you thought that he took no more notice of you than you took of him, or that you had no more reason to fear him than he had to fear you. Perhaps you thought that God had forsaken the earth, or had hidden his face and would never see your wickedness. And oh, how bold you have been, how audacious and fearless in sin! You were afraid to offend man, though he is only a worm, and yet you have not been afraid to offend God, the King of the whole world. Men’s laws have kept you from some sins, but the laws of God have not put the least restraint upon you. You have lived and sinned as if there were no God; or as if he were so gentle and mild and merciful that you might do anything to him and he would not be displeased with you; or as if, even though he were displeased, his displeasure were not to be regarded, and he had no power to execute vengeance upon you.

But now God’s patience has in great measure been turned into fury. Now, sinners, you may perceive a little that God can be angry. And if his anger, when it is kindled but a little, expresses itself so dreadfully, what dreadful expressions of it will there be when it breaks out into an open flame? If his anger is such in the day of some lighter, temporal judgments, what will it be in the day of the revelation of its treasures upon all the wicked, at the appearing of Jesus Christ?

But God’s vengeance now in these judgments should work your hearts to a fear and awe of this righteous Judge, who has carried out such executions in the City. It should bridle you and stop you in that fearless course of sin in which you were rushing on as the horse rushes into the battle.

When Balaam’s donkey saw the angel standing in the way with a drawn sword, it was afraid and would not go forward, though it was spurred on and beaten by its master. And when God stands in the way with his sword of judgment, which has already made such slaughter and is lifted up again to strike you, surely you should be afraid and turn back. It is the way to hell that God stands in by his judgments; and will you break through everything into those flames? Oh, stand in awe, and sin not; commune with your own hearts. Consider what has been happening in London, and who has done these things. Perhaps you have narrowly escaped with your lives. Oh, learn to fear the glorious and fearful name of the Lord God in these dreadful judgments.

And as God expects the world and his enemies to stand in awe of him, so much more does he expect it of the righteous and his own people. When God gave some of them free access to himself, admitted them to familiarity with him, encouraged them to boldness and confidence, and strewed their path with nothing but mercy, perhaps they abused his goodness and forgot to mingle faith and love with due reverence and respect. Perhaps they began to be too free with God, and presumptuous, not considering their origin and the distance between him and them, and forgetting the severity they deserved for sin. Therefore God appears in the way of these judgments with such terrible rebukes, so that his own people might be brought to a due awe and fear of his name: that if they love him, they may fear him too; if they pray with boldness, they may also pray with reverence; if they rejoice in his goodness, they may also tremble at his judgments.

3. God expects London now to search and try its ways. When God had punished Jerusalem with dreadful judgments, the prophet Jeremiah spent a whole book lamenting them. See what use and profit he calls on the people to make of them: “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord” (Lam 3:40). This was David’s practice in the day of his trouble: “I commune with mine own heart, and my spirit made diligent search” (Ps 77:6). It has been a day of God’s wrath in London, “a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasting and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,” as it was in Jerusalem (Zeph 1:15). Dark and thick clouds have hung over London. In part they have already broken into dreadful storms and astonishing tempests of God’s anger, which we have seen in the late judgments. All of them were produced by London’s sins, and those sins may yet produce far worse effects. London, then, is called on with a loud voice to search out and find the sins that have been the troublers of the City.

I suppose that true citizens would be eager to hunt down the persons who had a hand in first kindling the fire and keeping it going, the fire that burned their homes to the ground. Give me leave, and I will expose London’s arsonists for you. I will show you how to find them, how to trace their footsteps, what marks they bear, what their names are, and where they live. And do I need to lead you far in the search? The sinners, the sinners of London, kindled the fire of London. It was sin that set the first house alight. Sin was like oil poured on the flames, and it gave them such fury that no one could withstand them until the greater part of the city had fallen and been turned to ashes. The swearers, the Sabbath-breakers, the adulterers, the drunkards, the unrighteous, the profane, and sinners like them have been London’s arsonists. They had a hand in pulling down this judgment and others on the place where they lived.

Is it hard to find these people? Have they gone far from where they used to live? The skirts of London, its outlying parts, still remain. If you lift up those skirts, or turn your eye under them, and look into the houses still standing around the city, will you not find many of these people, these vile sinners, living there? They are still blowing hard on the fire of God’s anger, and pulling hard with cords of vanity and sin for further judgments. Search, London, search, and find out your enemies, your destroyers. Have you not destroyed yourself? Search, and find out your sins, which have brought such harm and ruin upon you.

Sinners, go into your private rooms and withdraw into yourselves. Take the candle of the Lord and look into your inner chambers. Make a strict search of your hearts. Find the filthy lusts that lodge in dark corners, and bring them out to be slain. Read over the old records of your lives, consult the register of your consciences, and turn over your former sins in your minds. Take the mirror of the Word and look at your faces in it, and see how many spots it will reveal that you never noticed before. These are not beauty spots but spots of deformity: plague spots, death marks, tokens of hell, such as will bring inescapable misery on you unless they are wiped away. Take the rule of the Word and measure your actions by it, and you may quickly see how far they have fallen short and how crooked they have been. What is straight is the measure both of itself and of what is crooked. Compare your actions with the straight rule of God’s law, and you will find many irregularities.

If you do not find out your sins, your sins will find you out, and God’s judgments will find you out; and if you are found out in your sins, woe to you! Oh, the horror that will be on your consciences when ruinous judgments fall on you personally and you cannot escape, when death looks you in the face and comes with the sting of sin in its mouth to devour you! But oh, the horror you will be under afterward if you are taken away in your sins! Immediately after your souls are separated from your bodies, they will be summoned to the bar of God. There you will be searched and tried, and condemned to everlasting torment by an inescapable and irreversible sentence of the Judge himself.

Oh, then, listen to the voice of God in these temporal judgments on the city, after which you are still alive through his infinite patience. It calls on you to search and try your ways, so that you may escape more fearful judgments that may be in preparation for you. Labor to find out your sins, which are the cause of all judgments, temporal and eternal. To help you in your search for sin, read the catalogue I have given you of London’s sins, and examine yourselves by it. Be very serious, thorough, and impartial in this search. Withdraw often from all company. Ease your mind of the load of worldly business; leave your baggage at the foot of the hill. Strive against the temptations and the reluctance that keep you from the work. Set yourselves in the presence of the God who searches hearts. Beg the help of his Spirit to show you what has displeased and provoked him. Search for sin as offensive to God and destructive to yourselves, as your worst enemy, as the cause of plague and fire in London, and as the thing that will bring the plagues and fire of hell upon you unless it is found out and subdued.

4. God expects London to acknowledge its sins to him. After the prophet had directed the people to search and try their ways once such judgments had been carried out on them (Lam 3:40), see the direction that follows: “Let us lift our hearts with our hands unto God in the heavens: we have transgressed, and have rebelled …” (Lam 3:41-42). So the prophet confesses the sins of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem hath greatly sinned, therefore she is removed. Her filthiness is in her skirts, she remembered not her last end, therefore she came down wonderfully” (Lam 1:8-9). And so the daughter of Zion, as she bewails her affliction, also acknowledges her transgression: “Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her. The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment. Behold O Lord for I am in distress, my bowels are troubled, mine heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled” (Lam 1:17-18, 20).

So too Daniel, after dreadful judgments, makes confession of the sins of the people of Israel: “I prayed unto the Lord, and made my confession, and said, O Lord the great and dreadful God, we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and thy judgments: neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land” (Dan 9:4-6). And again: “Yea all Israel have transgressed thy law, by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him: and he hath confirmed his word which he spake against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath it not been done, as it hath been done upon Jerusalem” (Dan 9:11-12).

God expects London to find out their sins, and having found them, to confess them. Oh, that the profane and ungodly generation in London, whose sins have been listed in the catalogue, could be persuaded to get alone by themselves and consider their evil ways! Let them consider what the consequences of their sins have been in bringing down temporal judgments, and what the consequence of their sins is likely to be, namely, bringing eternal judgments upon them. Oh, that they would fall down and lie prostrate at God’s feet, covering their cheeks with shame and blushing for their filthiness and foul sins under the gaze of so holy an eye! Oh, that they would acknowledge their transgressions to him, not only in general but also in particular, with all their heinous aggravations! Oh, that with a deep inward sense, with a bleeding, broken heart, they would fill their mouths with confessions! Oh, that they would take words with them and say:

“We have rebelled against you, O Lord, and done wickedly, and grievously offended you. We have been so foolish and so ignorant of you that we have been worse than beasts before you. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master; but though we are your creatures, and live on your bounty, and are provided for by you every day, we have not acknowledged you. We have shown less thought than those creatures that have no reason. We have been a sinful people, laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children who have been corrupters, who have forsaken you and provoked you to anger by our wickedness. We have been stubborn and disobedient. We have served your enemies, the devil and our own lusts, but we have neglected, indeed refused, to serve and worship you in our families and in private, living as if there were no God in the world. We have seldom if ever taken your name into our mouths except in vain, except in our oaths and curses. We have profaned your Sabbaths and defiled your ordinances, and we have often been more wicked on the Lord’s Day than on any other day of the week.

“When we were children, we disobeyed our parents; but we disobeyed you much more, for you commanded us to honor them. When we were children in years, we were grown men and women in sin. When we were weak in body, we were strong in spirit to commit iniquity. We learned the trade of sin before any other, and we were apt scholars in the devil’s school, when we were dull and slow to learn anything good. We were wise to do evil, but to do good we had no understanding. Our iniquities have grown up over our heads faster than our years have. Since we have been governors of others, we have had no government over our own spirits. Instead of laboring to draw those under our charge into the way of heaven by our example, commands, and persuasions, we have tried to lead them along with us in the way to hell. We have filled all our relationships with sin instead of filling them with duty.

“If we have not murdered anyone with our hands, we have murdered many with our tongues. Swords have been in our lips, and bitter, reviling speeches in our mouths. We have been guilty of murder in the heart. Oh, the excessive anger that has boiled in our hearts! Oh, the envy and malice that have gnawed at our spirits and worked within us every day! And those we have hated most have been the very people who bore your image and were best loved by you. We have scorned them and looked on them as poor-spirited people. We have cut them off from our company, as people who dampened and spoiled our mirth with their words and looks of reproof. Yes, we have persecuted them as seditious and factious people, when in truth it was their holiness and their way of life, which contradicted and condemned our wicked practices, that stirred up our anger against them. We have scoffed at those who prayed for us. We have regarded them and treated them as our enemies because they were enemies to our lusts, when they were the best friends to our souls and desired our salvation above all things.

“You have given us grain, and wine, and oil, and plentiful provision for our bodies, but we have abused your mercies by our intemperance and luxury. We have been guilty of drunkenness and gluttony. We have indulged our flesh and our sensual appetites. We have lived in pleasure and been wanton. Like so many swine, we have wallowed in the mire and dung of filthy sins that it is a shame even to speak of. We have had eyes and hearts full of lust and adultery, and we have broken out into such vile acts of uncleanness that the mere mention of them would raise blushes on modest cheeks. We have been unjust and unrighteous in our dealings. We have wronged and defrauded our neighbors, though you have threatened to take vengeance on all such people. Oh, the lies we have told, the slanderous, backbiting words we have spoken! Oh, the discontent, murmuring, envy, evil desire, disordered affection, and wicked passions that have been in our spirits! And though we have broken all your laws and are guilty of such notorious sins, oh, the impenitence and hardness of our hearts! Though no salvation can be had except by Christ, who is freely offered to us, oh, the unbelief of our hearts, and our neglect of our own salvation! We have sinned, we have sinned against you; and what shall we do to you, O Preserver of men?”

God expects London to confess their sin, and one could wish that London would join together like one man in this work. But if this cannot be, and they lack public mouths to open their hearts and sins before the Lord in particular confession, then let each one of them be a mouth for himself. Let him go into his private room and there acknowledge London’s sins. And if those who are most guilty neglect this work, let God’s people do it in their place. Let them confess not only their own sins but also the sins of the profane and wicked among whom they live. Let them do it not only because God is dishonored, but also because they themselves are in danger of being ruined by the unlamented sins of others.

5. God expects London to be humble under these judgments. God inflicted judgments on the children of Israel in the wilderness to humble them (Deut 8:16). After the severest distresses into which he brings his people for their sins, he promises to remember his covenant “if their uncircumcised heart be humbled” (Lev 26:40-42). Indeed, he promises in due time to exalt those who humble themselves under his mighty hand (1 Pet 5:6). God’s mighty hand has been stretched out over London, and God expects London to be humble. He has humbled them by his judgments; he expects them to humble themselves under his judgments. God has stained London’s pride; he expects them to lower their plumes. He has brought them down; he expects them to lie low. He has brought many of them to poverty in their estates; he expects all of them to be poor in spirit. He has made many of them lowly in their condition; he expects their disposition and affections to match it. God has laid many people in the dust by the plague, and many houses in the dust by the fire, and he expects those who survive and remain after such judgments to lay themselves in the dust for their sins.

Humble yourself, then, O London; humble yourself before the Lord. Lick the dust of his feet. Put off your ornaments and wrap yourself in sackcloth; clothe yourself with humility. God has spit in your face; will you be proud of your beauty again? He has burned the city with fire; will you be proud of your buildings and stately edifices any more? He has consumed much of the fuel of your pride, and he expects your pride to be brought down, and you to abase yourself and humble yourself before him.

6. God expects London to accept the punishment of its iniquity. “If my people shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, and be humbled, and accept the punishment of their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant, and remember the land” (Lev 26:40-42). God expects London to justify him in the severest judgments he has inflicted on them. As they should acknowledge their sins, so they should acknowledge what they deserve, and confess that the Lord has punished them no more than their iniquities have deserved, indeed that he has punished them less. As they should draw up a bill of indictment against themselves, so they should draw up a bill of acquittal for God. God expects them to say, as in Nehemiah 9:33, “Thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.” Or as in Daniel 9:7-8, “O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, because we have sinned against thee.”

Let London not murmur or grumble. Let London not find fault and complain against God because of his judgments: “Why doth the living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin?” (Lam 3:39). God has opened his mouth and spoken terribly, but let London shut her mouth, because God has spoken righteously. God has spoken with a loud voice; let London be in deep silence. “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth,” says David, “because thou didst it” (Ps 39:9). When Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, were consumed with fire from heaven for offering strange fire before the Lord, it is said that “Aaron held his peace” (Lev 10:1-3). So now that God has consumed the city of London with fire for the sins of its inhabitants, let them hold their peace, because they have deserved it.

Let London be still, and know that God is righteous. Let London lay her hand on her mouth, and her mouth in the dust. Let London close her lips and seal them with silence. Or if she opens them, let her mouth be filled with confessions, not complaints. Or if she complains, let her complain to God, but not of him. If she complains, let her complain against herself, but not against God. Let her complain of her own sin and wickedness, but not of God’s judgment, which is so righteous. Let London wonder that things are no worse with her, when both her sin and her danger were so great. Let her wonder that when God was so angry, he put any restraint on his anger; that when wrath had gone out, it went no further. Let her wonder that the plague did not wholly depopulate her, and that the fire did not entirely consume her. Let her wonder that things are as well with her as they are, that she has not been made a desolation, and let her say, “It is the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed” (Lam 3:22).

7. God expects London to mourn for her sins. We read, “A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the house of Israel” (Jer 3:21). Now that the terrible voice of God’s judgments has been heard in London, God is listening for the voice of weeping and supplication; this is what his voice calls for. When breaches were made in the city of David (Isa 22:9), “then did the Lord of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth” (Isa 22:12). And when instead there was “joy and gladness, eating flesh, and drinking wine,” the Lord was so angry that he threatened, “Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till you die” (Isa 22:13-14). See also what the Lord calls on the daughter of Zion to do under her judgments: “Let tears run down like a river day and night, give thyself no rest, let not the apple of thine eye cease: Arise, cry in the night, in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord” (Lam 2:18-19).

When severe judgments are on his land, God expects not only that his ministers and priests should “weep between the porch and the altar” (Joel 2:17), but that the people should weep too: that “the bridegroom” should “go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet” (Joel 2:16); that the people should be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, and that their laughter should be turned into mourning and their joy into heaviness (Jas 4:9). He expects those who escape his judgments to be like doves on the mountains, every one mourning for his iniquities (Ezek 7:16). London may mourn for her judgments, which have been so dreadful; but God expects them to mourn more for his displeasure, which has been the cause of these judgments, and most of all for their sins, which have been the cause of his displeasure.

Weep, London, weep for your sins, which have been so many and so provoking. Let your eye move your heart. When you look into your burial grounds and think how many of your people have lately taken up their dwelling there, it should draw tears from your eyes to think of your sins, which opened the doors of those lodgings to them. It seems to me that when you pass through your ruined homes and see the heaps of stones at the top of your streets, when you view your half-churches and bare steeples, your ragged walls and open vaults, and the dismal solitude in places that not long ago were full of people, it should fill your heart with sorrow for your sins. They kindled such anger in God’s breast that he sent the late dreadful fire, which has made such desolation.

Mourn, London, mourn; put on sackcloth. You see in part what an evil and bitter thing it is to offend a holy and jealous God. If the effects of sin here are sometimes so fearful, what evil must there be in sin itself, the cause of your ruin? God now looks for the sinners of London to become mourners. We read of a mark set on the foreheads of those in Jerusalem who mourned and cried out over the abominations done in the midst of it, and they were set apart from the temporal destruction brought on the rest (Ezek 9:4, 6). God sets a mark on those in London who mourn for London’s sins. However he may deal with them in temporal calamities, you may be sure that he will set them apart and preserve them from eternal destruction.

It seems to me that the fall of London calls for a mourning like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo, where Josiah fell in battle (Zech 12:11). And there should be not only public mourning but also private and secret mourning, families apart and persons apart. Now, after such strokes of God’s wrath, it becomes Christians to keep secret fasts, to bewail London’s ruins, and above all to bewail London’s sins. Their eyes should weep in secret places for the abominations committed in the city, and they should wet God’s feet with their tears, so that, if possible, they might turn away his displeasure.

8. God expects London to labor to pacify his anger. God threatened to send the sword and to cut off from Israel “the head and the tail, the branch and the rush in one day,” and to send famine so severe that they would “eat every man the flesh of his own arm.” Yet it is said, “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still” (Isa 9:14, 17, 20-21). And now that God has carried out his judgments of plague and fire in London, do we not have reason to fear that his anger is not yet turned away, but his hand is stretched out still?

Once the houses of London, which were the fuel of the late fire, had been consumed, the fire quickly went out. The sins of London have been, as it were, the fuel of this dreadful fire of God’s anger. So if the sins of London had been consumed along with the houses, if the inhabitants of the city had not carried their sins out with them when they were forced to leave their goods behind to the flames, then we would have reason to think that the fire of God’s anger had gone out and his wrath had turned away from the remnant of London that escaped. But look at the city now. After such judgments, so much sin has been saved alive, untouched and unmortified. The plague of sin rages so fiercely after the plague of pestilence has been removed, and the fire of lust burns so hotly now that the other fire is put out. Londoners who have taken new houses have brought their old hearts into them and live in the practice of their old sins. The swearers and the profane, the drunkards and the unclean, the covetous, the unrighteous, and the loose livers still persist in their wicked courses. No judgment will stop them; they grow more hardened and incorrigible. As it is said in Jeremiah 5:3, the Lord has “stricken them” for sin, “but they are not grieved”; he has “consumed them, but they refuse to receive correction, making their faces harder than a rock, and refuse to return.” When all this is so, what can we conclude but that God’s anger still remains, indeed that it is further enraged by this aggravation of their wickedness, and that he is stretching out his hand to strike them another blow?

God expects London to use some means to pacify his anger. He gives them time for it by the pauses he makes between his judgments, for he is still slow to anger, and unwilling, unless he is forced to it, to destroy utterly this place where his name has been called upon. Oh, that London could be persuaded to this duty, which so much concerns their safety and happiness! When the fire was in London and burned so furiously and dreadfully on the Monday and Tuesday, Londoners’ hearts sank within them. They had little hope of getting the victory over this conqueror that marched through their streets, and therefore little resistance was made; everyone was busy fleeing from it with their goods. But when the fury of the fire somewhat abated on the Wednesday, and they began to have some hope that it might be put out, they plucked up their spirits and joined their forces. Many thousands of hands were at work drawing water and pouring it on the flames, and through God’s blessing their labor was not unsuccessful.

The fire of God’s wrath, which will devour the wicked and burn them everlastingly, will be so furious and dreadful that the hearts of the damned will sink under it. Once it has taken hold of them, they will have not the least hope of ever putting out this flame or fleeing from it. Therefore they will not try; they will give up forever every effort to turn away God’s displeasure and to put out the unquenchable fire of hell. But the fire of God’s wrath and anger here may be put out, and the flames of his anger may be turned into flames of love. God’s anger, which has burned so hot against London, may be cooled, his wrath eased, and his displeasure removed. There is hope in Israel concerning this thing. God has not yet grown so furious that he will not be spoken to; he is easy to be entreated. London may therefore take courage in its efforts to pacify his anger. Let them not say, as Israel of old did, “There is no hope, no, for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go” (Jer 2:25). Though God’s anger is not yet turned away, it may be turned away. Though one hand is stretched out to destroy you, the other hand is stretched out to save you: “for he stretcheth forth his hand all the day long, to a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom 10:21).

Oh, labor then to pacify God’s anger and to quench this fire! Arise and wrap yourselves in humility. Pluck up your spirits and stir yourselves up to lay hold on God and stop him in the march of his judgments. Bring out your buckets, draw water, and pour it out before the Lord. Let your eyes be like fountains of tears. The voice of weeping and mourning for sin turns God’s heart within him: “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself, Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised …” (Jer 31:18). And when Ephraim repented after such chastisements and was ashamed of his sin, God relented, and his heart was moved for him: “Is Ephraim my dear son! is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I earnestly remember him still, therefore my bowels are troubled for him; and I will surely have mercy upon him saith the Lord” (Jer 31:20).

If London would accept chastening, and take to heart the grief and shame for their sins that these judgments are meant to impress on them, God’s heart would be moved and his fierce anger would be changed into tender compassion. Though he has spoken terribly against London, he would now speak comfortably to her. He would earnestly remember her, and make her glad according to the days in which he has afflicted her and the years in which she has seen evil. There is an excellent power in the tears of true repentance, joined with the blood of Christ applied by faith, to quench the fire of God’s anger.

Sinners, God is angry with you: “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Ps 7:11). And it is worse to have God angry with you than to have all the people in the world angry with you. His favor is better than life, and his displeasure is worse than death. To have God angry with you, a God so just and jealous, so powerful and terrible in his fury, is a very dreadful thing. If the wrath of an earthly king is like the roaring of a lion, what is the wrath of the King of heaven? And when his anger is stirred up by your sins and fanned into a flame and breaks out upon you, what will you do? You cannot hide yourselves in any place where his all-seeing eye will not find you. You cannot flee to any place where his outstretched arm will not reach you. You cannot gather enough strength to resist him and defend yourselves from the strokes of his vengeance: “who can stand in his sight when once he is angry?” (Ps 76:7). Oh, then, labor to pacify his anger! You cannot flee from him; oh, then, flee to him! You cannot stand in his sight when he is angry; oh, then, fall down at his feet! Make peace with this adversary while you are on the way, before he hands you over to the officer Death and throws you into the prison of hell.

Sinners, God’s patience is still holding back his arm. His mercy calls on you to repent, and he invites you to make your peace with him: “Who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle, I would go through them, I would burn them together; or let him take hold on my strength, and make peace with me, and he shall make peace with me” (Isa 27:4-5). You will be like briers and thorns, which easily catch fire and are quickly consumed in the time of God’s anger. And if briers and thorns offer to fight against devouring fire, what can the outcome be but that they are burned up beyond remedy? You will find it sharp and painful for your feet if you kick against the goads. You will dash out your brains if you run your head against a rock or a wall of bronze. No one has ever hardened himself against God and prospered. No one has ever fought against the God of heaven by his sins without being wounded and in the end destroyed. Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death, and wrath, and misery forever.

Oh, then, lay hold on God’s strength and make peace with him! Run to him. Take hold of the scepter of grace and reconciliation that is held out to you. Take hold of his arm and plead with him for mercy. Take hold of his Son, who is offered to you, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God (Rom 3:25). So far God has been forbearing with you. You are still on this side of the grave and of hell. There is still a possibility of turning away God’s anger that is kindled against you, of fleeing from the wrath that is pursuing you, of escaping the miseries that are being prepared for you. Therefore lay hold on Christ, who is freely offered to you, who is able and willing to save you, to make your peace with the Father, and to obtain a pardon for you.

And to move you further: you are not only offered peace and reconciliation, you are begged to be reconciled. Ministers beg you; indeed God himself, and Jesus Christ, through us, entreat and pray and beseech you to accept reconciliation (2 Cor 5:20). Be astonished, O heavens! Wonder, O angels! Be astonished much more, you sinners, and be carried away with amazement, you rebels! The King of glory, against whom you have rebelled, who could crush you so easily without any harm to himself, is not only willing to lay aside his anger but also begs you to accept reconciliation. Embrace Jesus Christ heartily on his own terms, and the work will be done. Otherwise the fury of the Lord will be provoked all the more, and the fire of his anger will break out into such a flame that no one will be able to quench it. Otherwise the Lord will be all the more enraged against you, and will meet you like a “roaring and devouring lion,” or “like a bear bereaved of her whelps,” and “rend the caul of your heart, yea tear you in pieces, when there shall be none to deliver” (Hos 13:7-8; Ps 50:22).

9. God expects London to turn from her evil ways. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 the Lord makes a sweet promise concerning the dreadful judgments of famine or pestilence that he sometimes sends on his people for their sins: “If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways: then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” God expects Londoners not only to acknowledge their sins now, and humble themselves, and mourn for their sins, but also to turn from them. Otherwise pardon and healing and his favor are not to be had, and further judgments are not likely to be prevented. They must confess and forsake their sins if they would find mercy (Prov 28:13). The wicked must forsake their way of sin and turn to the Lord, and then he “will have mercy,” and “abundantly pardon” (Isa 55:7). God threatens to go on punishing those who go on transgressing: “He will wound the head of his enemies, and the hairy scalp of such as go on still in their trespasses” (Ps 68:21).

Break off your sins, then, by repentance, and cast away all your transgressions from you. Put away the evil of your doings from before the holy and jealous eyes of God. Cease to do evil. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you who are wicked-minded. Wash yourselves in the fountain of Christ’s blood that has been opened for you, so that you may be cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and become partakers of holiness and of the divine nature. Deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts. Abstain from the flesh-pleasing sins that war against the soul. Do not be conformed to the wicked customs of wicked men, and do not follow this ungodly generation to do evil, much less run with them into the same excess of riot. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present evil world. Let the time past of your lives be enough, in which you have done the will of the flesh, served various lusts, and cast a blot on the profession of Christianity. Now be blameless and harmless and above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. Cast off the works of darkness; lay aside your night veil of ignorance; put on the robes of light. Walk honestly, as in the day, shining as lights where you live. Abstain from all works of darkness and sin. And as he who has called you is holy, so be holy in all your conduct.

Sinners, turn from your evil ways, or else iniquity will be your ruin.

(1) Drunkards, turn from your evil ways. Do not overload yourselves with excess, when God allows you enough for use. “Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it sparkleth and moveth itself aright: At last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” (Prov 23:31-32). “Wounds” and “woe” are the outcome of excessive drinking (Prov 23:29). This sin may be sweet and pleasing to the eye and the appetite at the moment of temptation, but afterward, when you reflect on it, it will wound and sting the conscience worse than an adder or a serpent can wound the body. God has put bitterness into the cup by his judgments; will you drink as deep as before? Are you determined to taste the dregs that lie at the bottom? The cup has poison in it, soul-poison; will you still drink from it, though you murder and destroy your souls forever by this sin? The cup has wrath in it, the wrath of an angry God; is it good for you to drink down the wine of God’s wrath?

Drunkenness has been your sin, and if you go on, God threatens that drunkenness will be your punishment: “Speak unto them this word, thus saith the Lord, every bottle shall be filled with wine” (Jer 13:12). Drunkards like this very well. They are well pleased that their bottles will be filled with wine, so that they may empty them. But understand the meaning: “Thus saith the Lord, I will fill all the inhabitants of the land with drunkenness; and I will dash them one against another, even the fathers, and the sons together: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them” (Jer 13:13-14). Drunkards, you sometimes reel and fall through your sin; God will make you reel and fall by his judgments, and dash you one against another, indeed dash you in pieces, and destroy you without pity or mercy. If you will not give up your cups and your excesses, God will put a cup of trembling and astonishment into your hand. He will put gall and wormwood into your cup, and make you taste the bitter effects of this sin. If he does not scourge you severely for this sin here, he will certainly torment you for it forever.

Turn, you drunkards, from your evil ways. Vomit up your sin by repentance. Weep and mourn for all your sinful mirth and jollity, and take care not to return like the dog and lick up the vomit you have thrown up. Avoid the occasions of this sin. Shun the company of those who have been your tempters. Take care not to go into the places where you have been drawn in to commit it. Make a covenant with your feet that they will never lead you out of God’s way into the places where you have been overtaken so often. Curb and restrain your appetite. Take a kind of holy revenge on yourselves: deny yourselves some things that are lawful in themselves, because they are occasions of sin to you. Instead of filling yourselves with wine or strong drink to drunkenness and excess, labor to be filled with the Spirit, and by the Spirit to put to death this and all the other deeds of the body. Better that the wicked wonder at you and speak evil of you for your sobriety than that God hate you and bring destruction on you for your intemperance.

(2) Adulterers, turn from your evil ways. Come out of the unclean bed. Wallow no longer in this smearing mire. Have you fallen into the ditch? Get up and come out with speed, and wash your garments of the spots they have received. Are you caught in the net and ensnared in adulterous embraces? Deliver yourselves like a roe from the hunter’s net, and like a bird from the fowler’s snare. Do not lust after the beauty and enjoyment of adulterous women. Do not let the soft, sweet language of their lips entice you, or the sparkling movements of their eyes inflame you. Do not put fire into your bosoms, and take care not to walk on burning coals. Why will you consume your body, your time, and your substance, which cannot be bought back? Why will you bring on yourselves a wound and a dishonor that cannot be wiped away? Why will you be like oxen going to the slaughter, and be such fools as to bring destruction on yourselves?

Turn from your evil ways. Do not dare to go forward in the way that leads to death and hell. “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers, and adulterers God will judge” (Heb 13:4). God has shot his arrows into the city and wounded many adulterers for this sin, who had already defiled and wounded themselves by it. Will you go on until a dart pierces through your liver? The beginning of the sin is sweet as honey, but will not its end be more bitter than wormwood? And if a little brief pleasure of the flesh is so desirable, will not the extreme and endless pain it produces be intolerable? Can you be content to lie so many millions of years under the horrible tortures of hell for a little present sensual delight, which, once reaped, cannot give you satisfaction? Is it sweet to fall into the arms of an adulterous woman? And will it not be bitter, indeed “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31), especially when he is irreconcilably angry, and his anger burns like a devouring and unquenchable fire? You have seen how dreadful the fire was that burned down the city. The fire of lust within you is worse. And the fire of hell beneath you, which is being prepared for you and toward which you are hurrying by this sin, is a thousand times more dreadful (more on this shortly). And will you still go on?

Oh, turn from your adulterous ways! Do not come near the door of the houses where you have found incitements to lust and opportunities for such lewd practices. Make a covenant with your eyes. The spark that falls on the tinder of an adulterous heart and sets it aflame is caught at the eye, not only from the eye but also by it. Do not look on the maid or the woman, so that you may not think; do not think, so that you may not lust; do not touch, so that you may not desire to taste; do not trifle, lest you be caught; do not come too near the brink, lest you fall into the stream before you know it. Beware of uncleanness in your thoughts, if you would be kept from uncleanness in deed. Beware of self-pollution, if you would be kept from adultery with others. Avoid the occasions of this sin; do not go into the company and places where you may have opportunity to commit it. Flee youthful lusts, which war against the soul. Keep your minds pure and chaste. Resist the first suggestions of this sin; quench the fire when it begins to kindle. Look to the outcome and consequences of this sin. Remember that the holy eye of God is on you in your most secret hiding places, and before long he will call you to account.

(3) Swearers, turn from your evil ways. Remember the third commandment, to which a threat is attached: God will charge guilt in a special way on those who break it. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, that taketh his name in vain” (Exod 20:7). Even to use the name of God irreverently is a breach of this commandment; but to swear by the name of God in ordinary conversation is a gross breach of it. As it affronts God highly, so it will certainly bring condemnation on the guilty who do not repent and stop. God made your mouths and gave you tongues to speak his praise, and when they do so they are your glory. Will you profane the name of this God, and turn not only God’s glory but your own glory into shame and dishonor, and do it when you lack even the motive and enticement that the sins of the flesh hold out? As Herbert puts it:

Take not his name, who made thy mouth, in vain;
It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse:
Lust and wine plead a pleasure, avarice gain:
But the cheap swearer through his open sluice
Lets his soul run for nought, as little fearing:
Were I an Epicure, I could hate swearing.

Look at Deuteronomy 28:58-59 and see what threats the Lord pronounces there against those who do not fear his name. Surely it is for lack of fear and awe of God’s name that anyone is so bold as to swear by it or take it in vain: “If thou wilt not fear this glorious and fearful name, The Lord Thy God, then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.” Has not God plagued and burned the city of London for this sin of swearing, among others? And will you still swear, and provoke the Lord to further wrath? Now that you have seen in part, in the judgments he has carried out, how fearful the name of God is, will you still go on profaning his name? Do you not fear future judgments? Will not the name of God be displayed still more dreadfully before you when he opens the treasures of his wrath and sends his Son in flaming fire to take vengeance on sinners? And will you still not fear this name of God?

Swearers, with what confidence can you pray to God? When you use God’s name in prayer, what hope can you have of the least hearing or acceptance, when you abuse his name so much and heap such dishonor on it by your oaths? If you do not pray now, as swearers seldom do, will you never be driven to your knees? Will you never be brought to such extremities that no creature can give you any relief? And with what face will you then look up to God? Will your calling on the name of God not be in vain, just as you have taken his name in vain? Will God not laugh at your calamity? And though you cry and shout, will he not shut out your prayer and bar the door of mercy against you forever?

Swearers, turn from your sin. Make a covenant with your mouth; set a watch before the door of your lips. Use God’s name in prayer, and use it reverently in conversation; do not swear by it or take it in vain any more. Get an awe of this name upon your hearts, for that will be an excellent means to keep you from this sin.

(4) Liars, turn from your evil ways. We read at the beginning of Acts 5 of Ananias and Sapphira, who were struck with sudden death for the sin of lying; it is said that “they fell down at the apostles’ feet, and gave up the ghost.” And has not the sin of lying been one ingredient in what deserved the fall of so many persons and households by the plague and fire in the city of London? The apostle especially warns the Colossians and the Ephesians against this sin of lying, after the wonderful grace of God had renewed them according to his image: “Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds: and have put on the new man …” (Col 3:9-10); and, “Having put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Put away lying, and speak every man truth to his neighbor” (Eph 4:24-25).

And I may warn Londoners against this sin, after the dreadful anger of God shown in the desolations he has made among them by his recent judgments: lie to one another no more, but let everyone speak truth to his neighbor. The Lord is a God of truth, and he cannot lie; labor to be people of truth, who will not lie. The devil is the father of lies and of liars (John 8:44); and which is more to be chosen, to be children of God or children of the devil? A lying tongue is one of the seven abominations which the Lord hates (Prov 6:16-17). Is there any good you can get by your lying that compares with the evil of making yourselves hateful and abominable in the sight of God? Is it necessary for you sometimes to tell lies? Is it not a thousand times more necessary for you always to speak the truth? Are you likely to gain as much by lying as by speaking the truth? What is a little outward profit compared with inward peace? Are you likely to lose as much by speaking the truth as by lying? What is the loss of external, temporal things compared with the loss of your souls and your happiness forever? Is it necessary to lie in order to excuse your faults? That makes them double. As Herbert says:

Nothing can need a lie;
A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.

Parents, warn your children against this sin of lying. Do not spare the rod of correction when you find them guilty of it; pass over twenty other faults sooner than this one. Lying is the first link in a chain of a thousand gross sins: rap their fingers off the first link, lest the chain afterward grow too strong for you to break.

Masters, do not indulge your servants in this sin. David’s resolution was, “He that worketh deceit shall not dwell in my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight” (Ps 101:7). Especially beware of leading your servants into this sin by your example, and above all of setting them on to it by your persuasions or commands. For besides the guilt of their sin, which you thereby incur, your loss is likely to be greater than your gain from their lies. If you set them to lying for you, they will set themselves to lying to you; and if by the first you deceive others in some things, by the second they are likely to deceive you, as you deserve, in greater things.

Young people, beware of lies. Do nothing that may need the cloak and excuse of a lie. And if you are overtaken in a fault, never deny it when you are questioned, but acknowledge it with sorrow, if you would gain favor with God and man. Beware of this sin early; lay lying aside before it grows into a habit, which will be hard to leave. Old people, break off this sin before you are dragged by its chain into the fire of hell, which is the punishment threatened against it (Rev 21:8). Do not be too hasty in speech, lest this sin slip out at the door of your lips before you are aware. Always speak as in the hearing of God, who knows whether your words and your heart agree, and who will one day call you to account for this sin and, unless you repent, punish you severely for it in the lake of fire and brimstone.

(5) Slanderers, turn from your evil ways. Slandering is one of the worst kinds of lying. The “teeth” of slanderers are compared to “spears and arrows, and their tongue to a sharp sword” (Ps 57:4). When they utter their slanders, they “bend their bow, and shoot their arrows, they whet their sword” (Ps 64:3-4), and with it they wound the reputation of others, which they are bound to guard as carefully as their own. Slanderers are false witnesses, who “lay to the charge of” others such “things as they know not” (Ps 35:11). They are lions, who tear the good name of others to pieces; they are serpents, whose words are stings full of deadly poison. They are compared to “mauls, and swords, and sharp arrows” (Prov 25:18); indeed, they are like “mad men, who cast about firebrands, and arrows, and death” (Prov 26:18). By this sin you wound others and are guilty of tongue-murder; but you wound yourselves more (I mean your consciences), and are guilty of self-murder, of soul-murder. The poison of such speeches is not so venomous and deadly to your neighbor’s good name as it is to your own spirits, which are envenomed by it and will be destroyed by it, unless the blood of Christ is applied to them for pardon and healing.

Slanderers, stop your backbiting, slanderous speeches. Stop the devouring words that swallow up the good name of your neighbors; do not let your throats be like open sepulchers to entomb their reputation. Take care that your tongues do not utter slanders and reproaches you have invented yourselves; be careful also that you do not spread such slanders as others have invented. Do not receive any accusation against your neighbors without good proof; drive away backbiting tongues with an angry countenance. And if you must hear of other people’s faults, let love conceal them as far as possible from the knowledge of others; rather, tell the persons themselves what you hear, and reprove them (if the things are scandalous) with prudence, love, and a spirit of meekness. Remember the command, “Speak evil of no man” (Titus 3:2). And beware of the sinful practice of the women described in 1 Timothy 5:13: “They learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.”

Where your tongues have been the instrument of wounding others, and yourselves along with them, by slanderous speeches, use the same instrument for healing. Labor to heal yourselves by confessing your sin to God, and to heal others by acknowledging to them the wrong you have done them. Labor to lick their reputation whole again, and by good words to restore the esteem you have unjustly taken from them. Labor for so much humility and brotherly love that you are as tender of their good name and reputation as of your own, and in honor prefer them above yourselves. This will make you ready to hide their faults, and will keep you from evil surmises and from evil, slanderous speeches.

(6) Revilers, turn from your evil ways. Reviling and slandering often go together, since both spring from the same root of malice and hatred. Yet sometimes the malice is kept more hidden. When there is war in the heart, and mischief is devised inwardly, and a person’s name is secretly wounded with slanders behind their back, the tongue flatters and, like a honeycomb, drips nothing but sweet words to their face. The sin of reviling is open. It spits rancor and malice into the face and breaks out into bitter speeches to shame and disgrace those against whom they are spoken, though revilers disgrace themselves more by the weakness and poor government of spirit that they reveal by it.

Revilers, restrain your angry, bitter speeches: “Let all bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph 4:31). Do not quarrel and contend; do not break out into brawls and clamors and bitter, reviling speeches against those who give you no occasion but desire to live at peace with you. And if others are angry and quarrel with you, labor to pacify their anger; do not stir up the coals by your bitter retorts. Like our Savior, when you are reviled, do not revile in return (1 Pet 2:23). “Render not evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing” (1 Pet 3:9). It is the second blow that makes the quarrel, and the second reviling word that makes the strife. Give a hard speech the return of a soft answer: “A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger” (Prov 15:1). And “long forbearance” has great power to persuade, and “a soft tongue breaketh a bone” (Prov 25:15). There is a marvelous power in the meek reception of bitter speeches to appease anger and soften the spirits of even the fiercest, whereas harsh and bitter retorts stir up greater contention. Do not avenge yourselves with the hand, and do not avenge yourselves with the tongue. Do not revile your enemies, but love them, pray for them, do good to them, feed and clothe them, and heap coals upon their head (Matt 5:44; Rom 12:19-20). “Be gentle, showing all meekness to all men” (Titus 3:2). Especially, do not revile your friends; beware of stirring up strife in the house where you live; be of a peaceable disposition. Above all, beware of reviling Christ’s friends, God’s children: do not revile the saints. Remember that no revilers, especially those who persevere in that sin, shall inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10); and when the Lord Jesus comes at the last day, “he will execute judgment upon the ungodly, for their hard speeches which they have spoken against him” (Jude 15), that is, in speaking against his people.

Revilers, govern your tongues: “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, that man’s religion is vain” (Jas 1:26). If you would govern yourselves well by the rules of Scripture, bridle and govern your tongues: “Behold, we put bits into the horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet they are turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth” (Jas 3:3-4). Put a bit on this little member, and you will be better able to have all the rest at your command and to keep yourselves in check. Otherwise your passions, once let loose, may carry you like wild horses without reins over many a precipice; otherwise the fierce storms of your minds may break out and drive you upon rocks and shoals, and shipwreck soul and body together. “There is a world of iniquity in the tongue, which defileth the whole body; the tongue is a fire, which setteth on fire the whole course of nature, and itself is set on fire of hell” (Jas 3:6). Get the first fire quenched; get the heat of your tongues cooled, if you would escape the second fire, I mean the fire of hell, from which the first fire comes and to which it will certainly bring you. The tongue is full of deadly poison; it is an unruly evil which no man can tame, though by skill the wildest beasts may be tamed and have been (Jas 3:7-8). Others cannot tame your tongues, but you may get them tamed yourselves. Put them under the government of Christ, and he will tame them. Get your passions tamed within, and you may tame this member, which is the instrument your passions use to vent themselves in your revilings. Keep guard and sentry before the door of your lips, and watch your words, so that you do not offend with your tongues.

(7) Persecutors, turn from your evil ways. Stop persecuting the people of God, who desire your good, and who by their prayers and faith are the best safeguard and defense of the places where they live against misery and destruction. Is it good for you to hack at the bough you stand on, over so deep a pit that if you fell into it you could never recover yourselves again? Is it good for you to pull at the pillars of the house, which, if you pull them down, will bring the house down upon you and bury you in its ruins? Is it good to put yourselves under the burdensome stone that will grind you to powder? Suppose that while you are breathing out threats against any of Christ’s disciples, in the heat of your rage and furious persecution of them, you should hear such a voice from heaven as Paul did: “Sinners, sinners, why do you persecute me?” Would it not cool you and stop you? You may hear this voice if you will open your ear to the Word. It is Christ you persecute in his disciples; it is Christ you wound through their sides. You would do the same to him as the Jews did, if he were alive among you and you had the same power that was once put into their hands against the Lord of life. I will not charge London with the sin of persecuting God’s people, and so I need not warn them generally against it, because London has been a shelter to God’s people when the times have frowned most upon them. But are there none who need this warning? Are there no Judases among them, none with the spirit Paul had before his conversion?

Persecutors, give up this sin. It makes you as like the devil as any sin I know, and locks you fastest in his arms. It is the very next door to the sin against the Holy Spirit. It will bring swift destruction upon you; it will sink you into the lowest parts of the bottomless pit; it will lash and sting your consciences with horrible scourges hereafter, if they are not awakened with horror here. Turn from this sin before it is too late. Imitate Paul, and become friends to those against whom you have shown so much enmity and spite.

(8) Covetous persons, turn from your evil ways. God has struck you for the iniquity of your covetousness; do not go on perversely in this sin. He has taken away much of the fuel of this sin and burned it in the fire; let there be a greater decay in your lust of covetousness than there has been in any of your estates. Covetousness is one of the sins the apostle would not have so much as named among the saints (Eph 5:3). If it reigns, it is a sin inconsistent with the truth of grace and the power of godliness, because it is idolatry (Col 3:5). And the apostle tells us expressly that covetous persons shall not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10), and indeed that the wrath of God shall come upon them (Eph 5:6).

Covetous persons, turn from your sin; get this earthly member put to death. Get your hearts loosened from the things you have until now made your god, and in which you have sought your chief happiness.

Do you have little in the world? Be content with the portion God gives you; you have as much as God sees fit for you: “Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have” (Heb 13:5). Covetousness can no more heal your poverty than riches can heal your covetousness.

Do you have much in the world? Are your riches increasing? Do not set your heart on them. Make use of what God has given you, without the kind of pinching and self-denial that the Lord Jesus never commanded in his precepts of self-denial. God never gave riches to be saved up, but to be used. Beware of exceeding the bounds in spending, yet do not withhold from yourselves the moderate use of what you have for fear of wanting in the future. Use part of your estates for yourselves, in what is needful for the body and suitable to your rank and station; lay aside part for your descendants; and lay out part in helping those in need, for the relief of the poor. In this way you will lay up for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, and at last lay hold on eternal life (1 Tim 6:18-19).

(9) Unrighteous persons, turn from your evil ways. God has been righteous in his judgments because you have been unrighteous in your dealings; and as his judgments rebuke your sin, so they warn you to leave it. Unrighteous gains will bring you little advantage in the end. See what the apostle James says of the wealth that people get in such a way, in James 5:2-4: “Your riches are corrupted, and your garments moth-eaten: your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it were fire: ye have heaped treasure together for the last days; behold the hire of your laborers which have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” The curse of God goes along with unlawful, unrighteous gains, and is like moth and rust to corrupt and canker them. They bring a fire into the flesh and bones that will eat and torment; they pierce people through with many sorrows; and at their latter end they utterly consume them with terrors, if their conscience is awakened. The treasures of wealth that unrighteous people heap up are not so great as the treasures of wrath that they heap up by their sin against the last day. The wrongs they do to others cry with a loud voice to God, and the Lord will be the avenger of all who are defrauded.

Let those who have been unrighteous, then, be unrighteous no more. You cannot wrong others as much by this sin as you wrong yourselves. Shake your hands free of dishonest gains. Make restitution of what you have defrauded others of, as you expect salvation, for “the sin is not forgiven unless what was taken is restored.” This is a hard saying to some, who have no other wealth than what they have gained in a dishonest and unrighteous way; but will it not be harder to suffer the vengeance of eternal fire for this sin? Is it not better to impoverish yourselves so that you may be just and honest while you live, than to be damned and thrust into a place of torment when you die? You must leave what you have. If God does not take it away before then by some temporal calamity, you may be sure that death will strip you of everything. And is it not better for you to part with it yourselves to its rightful owners, when this is the way to obtain pardon and peace, and an inheritance worth a thousand times more? And do not fear: God will provide for you while you remain in the world, if you resolve to be honest and put your trust in him who has the disposal of the earth and its fullness. Be righteous from now on; do not swerve a hair’s breadth from the rule of right. Whatever you would have others do to you, do to them. This is a principle written on the heart by nature, and this is the law and the prophets (Matt 7:12).

(10) Hypocrites, turn from your evil ways. Surely the terrible voice of God should frighten you in the midst of your hypocritical shows and outward devotions. Surely you should now bend your hearts to please the Lord, and approve yourselves chiefly to him, who has shown so much displeasure against sinners and is most highly offended with hypocrites. What good will a form do you without the power of godliness? What good will shows do you without sincere and substantial service? What benefit will you get from counterfeit graces, if your graces are not real? If your repentance and faith and love and the like are feigned, how ineffectual they will be to obtain pardon and peace and salvation! Are you content to lose all your bodily exercise, and to have all your heartless, lifeless duties rise up one day in judgment against you? What advantage will you gain by a bare profession of religion, especially in times like these, when a profession, if it is strict, is frowned upon, and those who profess religion, if their lamp shines with any brightness and they carry any great sail, expose themselves to danger? And if you lack sincerity, which alone can yield you the true and sweet fruits of religion, you are likely to lose everything, and to make yourselves the most miserable of all people. You may suffer from men because you have a profession, and you will suffer from God because you have no more than a profession. What then? Should you cast off your profession? No; then you would become apostates, and might fall into the sin against the Holy Spirit, which would bring inevitable damnation upon you. Rather, lay aside your hypocrisy and become sincere; be in truth what you are in show. Labor for sincerity with regard to your state, and labor for sincerity with regard to your duties.

Sinners, God calls on all of you by his thundering voice to turn from your evil ways.

Turn immediately. Let the time past be enough, in which you have fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Do not go one step further in the way of sin, lest you meet with sudden destruction and perish without remedy.

Turn universally. Do not say of any sin, as Lot did of Zoar, “It is a little one” (Gen 19:20). Cast away all your transgressions, and let no iniquity have dominion over you from now on.

Turn heartily, from an inward principle of hatred for sin and love for God, and not from outward considerations, or merely because of the dreadful consequences of sin.

Turn constantly, with full purpose of heart never to return to your evil ways of sin again.

10. The Lord expects that after such judgments London should seek him. He expects its people not only to turn from their evil ways but also to “turn unto him that hath smitten them, and seek the Lord of Hosts” (Isa 9:13). We read in Amos 5:2, “The virgin of Israel is fallen, she is forsaken, and none to raise her up.” Upon this God calls them to this duty: “Thus saith the Lord to the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live; but seek not Bethel … seek the Lord, and ye shall live, lest he break forth like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour, and there be none to quench; seek him who made the seven stars, and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning … the Lord is his name” (Amos 5:4-6, 8). And it follows, “It may be the Lord will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph” (Amos 5:15). And when this duty is neglected, see the threat: “Wailing shall be in all streets, and they shall say in all the highways, Alas, alas! and they shall call the husbandmen to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation, to wailing” (Amos 5:16).

And now London is fallen. Is the Lord not calling on its people to call on him? And if they want to turn away his anger and prevent their utter ruin, is he not calling them to seek him who can turn the shadow of death into the morning, and the blackest night of affliction into a day of prosperity and rejoicing? London, seek the Lord so that you may live, so that there may be a reviving after these years of so much death and ruin. Seek the Lord before the decree brings forth some other judgment, and you pass away like chaff before the whirlwind in the day of the Lord’s fierce anger. It may be that the Lord will be gracious to the remnant of this great city.

God expects London to pray now in a very different way than it has prayed before. It is said, “All this evil is come upon us, yet made we not our prayer unto the Lord our God” (Dan 9:13). And when God had consumed Israel because of their iniquities, the prophet complains, “There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee” (Isa 64:7). Had London’s prayers been what they should have been, and what they once were, London’s desolations might have been prevented. God expects London, under such chastisements, to pour out prayers before him (Isa 26:16). God has spoken terribly to them; he expects them to cry mightily to him.

God expects London to meet him in the way of his judgments, not only with weeping for their sins, because they have provoked him to such great displeasure, but also with supplications for his mercies. When Jacob was devoured and his dwelling place laid waste (Ps 79:7), you have their prayer: “O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O Lord God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name: deliver us, and purge away our sins for thy name’s sake” (Ps 79:8-9). And the church under desolating judgments expresses herself in prayer with deep feeling: “Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness, and thy glory: where is thy zeal, and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels, and thy mercies? are they restrained? Doubtless thou art our Father … We are thine, return for thy servants’ sake …” (Isa 63:15-19). And again: “Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people” (Isa 64:9). God has been pleading and contending with London by his judgments, and God looks for London to plead with him in prayer for his mercies.

London, seek the Lord of Hosts, who has come out against you in battle and wounded you with his sharp arrows, and yet has not laid down his weapons. Get on your knees. Cling to God’s feet and arms. Fill your mouths with arguments to stop him in the course of his judgments. Let your eyes never cease weeping that you have displeased him, and let your tongues never cease from humble and earnest pleading that he would pardon you and remove his displeasure from you.

Seek the Lord humbly. Put your mouths in the dust, if perhaps there may be any hope. God hears the cry of the humble and will not despise their prayer (Ps 10:17; Ps 102:17).

Seek the Lord diligently. He has promised to be found by all who diligently seek him (Heb 11:6). God looks for earnest, hearty, fervent prayer. There is a sweet promise that God makes to his people’s prayers after the heavy judgments he had brought upon them: “I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go, and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you: and ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jer 29:11-13).

Seek the Lord believingly. Mix your prayers with faith, and make use of Christ’s mediation, so that you may prevail.

11. By the voice of his judgments God calls on London to prepare for greater troubles. The face of God seems to threaten greater troubles. There is little sign that God’s brow is any smoother now than it was before the fire; there is little evidence that God’s anger has been appeased. The face of the times seems to threaten greater troubles. The cloud over London and England is still very black, and seems thicker than it was before.

God’s own people are likely to undergo greater troubles. Some of them have endured much, but they are likely to endure much more. Some of them have suffered deeply, but they are likely to suffer greater things, and more generally. They have been brought low by affliction, but not as low as others are; when others of God’s people are stripped of everything, they enjoy comparative prosperity. They are not as low as they deserve to be; their sins, which bring reproach on the gospel, deserve far greater severity.

They are not as low as they may need to be. They may need greater troubles to unite them more closely to one another in their affections, to further their sanctification, to wean them and loosen them more from the world, to humble them for sin and purify them more from it, and to exercise and brighten their graces more. They are not as low as perhaps they must be before they are exalted. The night is darkest before the day breaks; the storm is often fiercest in its last blast; and the afflictions of God’s people are sorest just before God gives them deliverance. God lays his people lowest when he intends their highest exaltation.

Surely the expected shock is not yet over. The most dreadful sufferings of God’s people seem to be threatened most immediately; they seem near, very near, even at the doors. The purpose of the recent judgments by plague and fire seems plainly to be to fit and prepare them for sharper and heavier blows. If God had allowed those expected sufferings to come upon them more suddenly, they might have found themselves less ready for them. God has given them time to prepare, and awakening warnings to prepare; and when will they be ready to suffer like Christians, like Protestants, if they are not ready now?

The profane and wicked generation in the land is likely to endure greater troubles, as I have shown earlier. And when the storm of God’s anger breaks upon them, are no drops likely to fall on London? Is the whole land not likely to be in danger of ruin when God deals with the ungodly and wicked crew whom he spares for a time, while he punishes the more righteous so severely? London’s troubles have been great, but it seems evident to me that London is in danger of greater troubles. Therefore its people need to make the preparation they have had such awakening calls to make.

Some may think the bitterness of London’s troubles is over because those troubles have been so bitter. They are like those who think the sharp winter cold is gone because it was so sharp in midwinter and the sun has now climbed somewhat higher. But March can bring in as cold and nipping a frost as December and January did; and when some expect the spring of prosperity, they may find the sharpest part of the winter of troubles still ahead. Therefore, London, prepare for greater troubles.

12. God expects London to trust no more in arms of flesh, but in himself alone. By these judgments God has shown London how weak and insufficient arms of flesh are, what broken reeds they are. Some put their trust in men, and their great expectation of relief and comfort has been from their friends. By the plague God has shown how frail and weak man is: how like grass, or a flower that quickly withers or is cut down; how like glass, or a bubble that is easily broken and vanishes. Many have lost to the plague their chief friends, on whom they depended entirely, and the Lord has shown how insufficient a foundation man is for anyone’s trust and confidence. Therefore he calls aloud to London to “cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isa 2:22), and not to trust in “any of the sons of men, in whom there is no help.” And the reason is that “their breath goeth forth, they return to their dust, in that very day all their thoughts perish” (Ps 146:3-4).

Some put their trust in their wealth and riches: “The rich man’s wealth is his city, and a high wall in his own conceit” (Prov 18:11). By the fire, which has consumed so much of the city’s wealth, God has shown how insufficient a foundation wealth is for anyone’s confidence. He has made it evident that riches are uncertain, and that they fly away on eagles’ wings, sometimes while their owners are looking on. May not what is threatened in Psalm 52:5, 7 be said of many in London? God has rooted some of them out of the land of the living by the plague, has plucked and forced others out of their homes by the fire, and has taken away their stay and prop; and of them it may be said, “Lo, these are they that made not God their strength, but trusted in the abundance of their riches, and strengthened themselves in their wickedness.”

London, trust no more in arms of flesh, but trust in God alone. “It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in men; it is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in princes” (Ps 118:8-9). God is knocking your fingers off all things here below; his will is that you should put your trust in him. This is one promised effect of great desolations and afflictions, and you should labor after it: “I will also leave in the midst of thee an afflicted, and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord” (Zeph 3:12). You were not so quick to trust in the Lord when you had greater abundance; try to trust in him now that you are brought into greater poverty and affliction. His infinite power, wisdom and lovingkindness, his promise, truth and faithfulness, are a strong foundation for your trust and confidence in God.

Trust in him at all times, even in the worst of times. When your danger is greatest, he will be your help and shield (Ps 115:11). He will be your refuge under oppression, and a present help in time of trouble (Ps 46:1). He will be your rock and fortress, your high tower to defend you, or your deliverer to redeem you out of all your troubles. Trust in God alone for all things. If you make use of creatures, do not lean and rest your weight on them, for they will slip out from under you; stay yourselves on God. Oh, the peace and quiet this will give you in shaking, troubled days! When the hearts of others tremble within them and are moved like leaves at the approach of danger, you will not be afraid of evil tidings, but will have your hearts fixed, trusting in the Lord (Ps 112:7).

13. God expects London to keep death in continual remembrance. God expects this from the judgment of the plague. The death of so many thousands a week in London presented such a spectacle of mortality, and preached such a sermon in the city, as should bring death to their minds every day of their lives. The death of even one or two should remind you of your latter end; but when you have seen so many go down into the pit before you, it should engrave the remembrance of death more deeply on your minds, and you should look into that record daily.

In the year of the plague the gates of the city seemed to bear this inscription: “All flesh is grass” (Isa 40:6). Let that word sound in your ears every day. Remember that your bodies are exposed to the stroke of death every day; and remember that though you have outlived the plague, death is still chasing you and will before long (you do not know how soon) overtake you. Remember that your hourglass is running and will quickly run out. Therefore, all the days of your appointed time, as you should remember your great change, so you should prepare for it.

God expects the remaining inhabitants of London to be well prepared for death now, when they have had death so much in view. Some of you have been sick with the plague and brought to the very brink of the grave; all of you were in danger of the plague when the disease was so severe and raging. I fear that most of you were unprepared for death at that time, and that had you died then, you would have died in horror. And I believe there are few of you who did not, in the time of your fears and danger, make vows and promises: if the Lord would shelter you from the arrows flying around you and spare your lives then, you would lead new lives and be more careful to prepare for your change, so that death would never again take you so unprovided. God expects you to fulfill your promises and live up to the vows you made in the time of your distress. He expects you to provide for yourselves while you are well, so that the messenger of death may have a welcome reception whenever he summons you to leave this world.

14. God expects London to retain deep impressions of eternity. You have had the door of eternity set wide open before your eyes, when so many were thronging in at that door, and I believe you had deeper thoughts of eternity in those days than ever before in your lives. Take care that those impressions do not wear off, and that you do not lose those thoughts, especially since you are drawing nearer and nearer to eternity every day. Think often of the vast ocean of eternity, with no bottom and no bank on the other side, into which the whole stream of time will empty itself, and how quickly the little brook of your appointed days may fall into it. Think often of the unalterable state of joy or misery you must enter at the end of your course. Think how thin and short the pleasures of sin are in this life compared with the horrible and endless torments of hell; and how light and momentary the afflictions of God’s people are here compared with the exceeding and eternal weight of glory prepared for them in heaven (2 Cor 4:17).

15. By the fire that burned down the city, God calls on London to secure themselves against the fire of hell. London’s fire was dreadful, but the fire of hell will be a thousand times more dreadful. The fire of London was kindled by man; certainly some secondary cause was used in it. But the fire of hell will be kindled by God himself: “Tophet is ordained of old, for the king it is prepared, he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood, and the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it” (Isa 30:33). The fire of London burned the houses of the city and consumed much of the goods; but the fire of hell will burn the persons of the wicked: “Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire” (Matt 25:41). The fire of London burned most of the houses in the city, but not all; some are still standing. But the fire of hell will burn all the persons of the wicked; not one of them will escape and remain. The fire of London was put out, and lasted only four days; but the fire of hell will be unquenchable. It will burn forever. It is called “everlasting fire,” in which the damned must lie and burn eternally, without any possibility of ever getting out.

If you had known beforehand about London’s fire, where it would begin, and how it would spread and seize on your houses, surely you would have taken some course to prevent it. You do know beforehand about the fire of hell; the Word of God has revealed it. Oh, take some course to prevent it, or at least to secure yourselves against it! When the fire was burning in London, you fled from it, lest it should consume your persons as well as your houses. Oh, flee from the fire of hell, into which your persons will be thrown if you go on in sin! Flee from the wrath to come; flee to Jesus Christ, who alone can deliver you.

16. By the fire God calls on Londoners to be like strangers and pilgrims in the world. God has burned you out of your homes so that he might loosen your affections from houses and riches and all things here below; so that he might unsettle you, unhinge you, unfix you, and you might never, as long as you live, think of rest and settlement in created things. By this judgment God calls you to take your hearts off this world, which is so very uncertain, and to be like strangers and pilgrims on the earth, since you are to lodge here only a few days and nights on your way to the other world. God expects you to live as those who have no certain dwelling place here. Therefore you should not squander too much of your thoughts and affections and time on these uncertain things, which last so short a while and with which you cannot stay long.

By his judgments God has crucified the world a great deal before your eyes, and he expects the world to be crucified in you. God has poured contempt on the world and set a mark of disgrace on it. He has thrown dirt on the face where you once imagined so much beauty lay. He expects the world to fall in your esteem, and you to grow out of love with it, and never again to go whoring away from him after created things.

17. God calls on London to make him their habitation. “Lord thou hast been our dwelling places in all generations” (Ps 90:1). God is the hiding place and the dwelling place of his people. You have lost your dwellings by the fire; make God your habitation, and dwell in him, to whom you may always have access, and in whom you may have a sure abode. Get possession of this house by your union with God through his Son; and once you are in, keep possession. Stay in this house. Do not wander from him, or turn yourselves out of doors by breaking his household laws. Make God your home, and labor to be well acquainted at home. Spend your time with God, and give your hearts to him. Rest and repose yourselves in God daily. Look for all your provisions in him and from him. Walk in him and with him. Make God your habitation.

18. God calls on London to seek an abiding city. “We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb 13:14). London has reason to say the first part; therefore let London do the second. You have seen the city fall by the fire; seek a city that has more lasting foundations, and is so strongly built that time cannot wear it down and weaken it, nor flames of fire reach it and consume it. I mean the New Jerusalem which is above, the heavenly city whose builder and maker is God. There are mansions there, abiding places for the saints (John 14:2). There the wicked will cease from troubling, and the weary will be at rest. Seek this city. Labor for a title to it, lay up your treasure in it, set your affections on it. Above all other trades, drive a trade for heaven, which in the end will yield you the best returns.

19. God expects London to labor to build his house. I believe the neglect of God’s house has been a great cause of the fall of so many houses in the city by fire. God expects you now to set about building his house; otherwise I do not think God will build your houses again. You may have an Act of Parliament for building the city, and set workmen to it; but unless God enacts it too, the building will never go forward. Unless God builds the city, the workmen will labor in vain. Read and consider the prophecy of Haggai. Set about the work of reformation more vigorously, especially in the house and worship of God.

20. God expects Londoners to dedicate themselves and their families to him. You have broken your baptismal vows and others, and God has made great breaches upon you for your unfaithfulness. Now renew your vows. Give yourselves up to God; declare him to be your God, and declare yourselves to be his people, and live accordingly. Take up Joshua’s resolution: whatever others in the land do, you and your families will serve the Lord. Make it your only business in the world to serve God. Let religion influence all your actions. Do nothing without the warrant of God’s command. Let your conduct be such as becomes the gospel. Govern your families in the fear of God. Fill all your relationships with duty. Learn more righteousness from God’s judgments, and be quickened by them to a more holy and strict walk.

And suppose you yield fruits such as these, which God expects after his plowing and harrowing of you. Suppose you open your ears to the terrible voice of the Lord which has sounded in the city, and with full purpose of heart set about practicing the duties he expects and calls for. Then you may hope that he will yet build you up and plant you, that he will close your breaches and raise up your ruined homes, that he will make you glad according to the years in which he has afflicted you, and let you see good days instead of the evil ones you have seen and felt. Then the Lord will rejoice over you to do you good, and make London like Mount Zion, where he will pitch his tent and take up his habitation. Then he will surround you with the bulwark of salvation, and prevent those further, utterly desolating judgments you are in danger of. Yes, the Lord will be as “a wall of fire” round about you (Zech 2:5), and the glory in the midst of London, from which his praise and your fame will sound throughout the whole world.

To God alone be the glory.