written and presented to them immediately after the fire had burnt them out of their habitations. Friends, it is high time for all of you to retire yourselves, and bethink yourselves, and wisely to consider God's dealings with you; to open your ear, and labour to understand these speaking judgments, lest, if God be provoked by your deafness and incorrigibleness to speak a third time, it be in your utter ruin and desolation. If these papers be any ways helpful to revive in your memories the judgments themselves, by the Historical Narration which here you have of them, to work your hearts to some sense of sin in discovery of the cause; and to persuade you to a ready compliance with God's design, in the declaring of what God now expects from you, after such dreadful executions; as yours will be the benefit, so I desire that God may have the whole glory; and that you would make this return for my help of you, to help me with your prayers, that I may be the more helpful to you in mine, who am

Your dearly affectionate Friend, and Servant in the Lord,

T. VINCENT.

GOD'S TERRIBLE VOICE

IN

THE CITY.

PSALM lxv. part of the fifth verse.

'By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us."

INTRODUCTION.

"SHALL a trumpet be blown in the city, and th

e 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 iii. 6. 8. When the Pharisees spake to our Saviour to rebuke his disciples for their loud praises of the Lord with hosannas, He tells them, "If they should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out," Luke xix. 39, 40. And we read in Habakkuk, chap. ii. 11.

"Of the stone crying out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber making answer." Certainly we in London have lately heard the cry of stones and walls, of timber and beams in their fall and flames; I mean in the late dreadful fire, which hath laid our Jerusalem in heaps; or rather, we have heard the voice of God in this and other terrible things which have come upon us: let none then rebuke, if one so unfit, do make an attempt to speak something of the meaning of London's fire, or of God's terrible voice in this and other judgments, when by the mouth of babes God can declare his will.

THIS whole Psalm breathes forth nothing but grace and goodness unto the people of God, from the beginning of it, to the end; yea, in the verse of my text where God speaks most terribly and righteously in the judgments and destructions which he bringeth upon their enemies, yet he is called the God of their salvation; and those terrible things by which God speaks, are not only a righteous answer unto their enemies' sins, but also a gracious answer unto his people's prayers by terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us,

I shall not speak of terrible things in the

restrained sense, as they befall only the enemies of God's people, and the wicked, whilst the righteous do escape, and it may be hereby are preserved; but as they may befall any people, not excluding God's people, whom the Lord may answer by terrible things in righteousness.

Two doctrines we may observe.

Doct. 1. That God doth sometimes speak unto a people by terrible things.

Doct. 2. That when God doth speak most terribly, He doth answer most righteously.

First. That God doth speak sometimes unto á people by terrible things.

Here I shall show,

1. How God may be said to speak.

2. What those terrible things are by which God "doth sometimes speak.

3. Why God doth sometimes speak unto a people by terrible things; and then apply,

1. How God may be said to speak.

God, being a Spirit, hath no mouth nor tongue properly as men have, who have bodies; and therefore his way of speaking is not like ours (though sometimes he hath created a voice in as articulate a sound, as if it had proceeded from the mouth of man, to declare his will,) but there are several ways in which God hath spoken, and doth speak unto the children of men, by which he doth as really and effectually make known his mind, as if he spake with man's voice.

1. God hath spoken formerly unto men imme