inasmuch as London was the chief city; inasmuch as the King's court was here, and most countries had relations here: and all countries had concernments here: moreover the plague was not only in London and Westminster, and places near adjacent; but it was dispersed into the countries at a farther distance, as Cambridge, Norwich, Colchester, and other towns, where it raged either the same or the next year, as much proportionably as it did in London.

2. The judgment of the fire, which burned down only the City, and left Westminster and the suburbs standing, and did not reach into the countries, yet was a national judgment, because London was the metropolis of the land; because the beauty, riches, strength, and glory of the whole kingdom lay in London; and it was not the inhabitants of the city who alone did suffer by this fire, but the whole land, more or less, do and will feel the smart hereof.

Secondly, These judgments then being national, it is not unreasonable to say, that national sins have been the cause of them; and if so, we may readily find a reason of God's righteousness in these proceedings, when the sins of the land are so obvious and so heinous. He is a great stranger in England that doth not know, how wickedness hath abounded in these later years; his eyes must be fast shut, who doth not see what a deluge of profaneness and impiety hath broken in like a mighty torrent, and overflowed the land; that hath not taken notice of those barefaced villanies which have been committed amongst us, which is a great question whether

any ages before us could parallel: we read in Scripture of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the wickedness sometime of Jerusalem: profane histories and travellers make mention of Rome, Venice, Naples, Paris, and other places very wicked; but who can equal England, which calls itself Christian and Protestant, for such desperate and audacious affronts and indignities which have been offered to the highest Majesty by the gallants (as they are called) of our times? How was hell, as it were, broke loose; and how were men worse than those which, in our Saviour's time, were possessed with devils, who cut themselves with stones, and tore their own flesh; even such who went about like so many hellhounds and incarnate devils, cursing and banning, swearing and blaspheming, inventing new oaths, and glorying therein, delighting to tear the name of God, and to spit forth their rancour and malice in his very face? And can we then be at a loss for a reason of God's righteousness in his thus punishing England, by beginning thus furiously with London? When were there so many atheists about London, and in the land, who denied the very being of God; when so many gentlemen (who looked upon it as one piece of their breeding to cast off all sentiments of a Deity) did walk our streets, and no arguments would work them to a persuasion of the truth of God's being, shall we wonder, if the Lord appears in a terrible way, that he might be known by the judgments which he executeth? When so many denied the Divine authority of the Scriptures, the very foundation of our Christian faith, and

reckoned themselves, by their principles, amongst Turks, Pagans, and other infidels, however, they called themselves Christians, and hereby put such an affront upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Most High God; is it strange that the Lord should speak so terribly, to shew his indignation? When there was such blowing at, and endeavours to put out that light which would shew men the way to heaven; such hatred and opposition against the power of godliness; when the name of a saint was matter of derision and scorn; when there was such wallowing in filthy fornication and adultery, in swinish drunkenness and intemperance; when such oppression, bribery, such malice, cruelty, such unheard of wickedness, and hideous impiety, grown to such a height in the land, may we not rea sonably think that such persons as were thus guilty, being in the ship, were a great cause of the storm of God's anger, which hath made such a shipwreck ?

The plague indeed, when it was come, made little discrimination between the bodies of the righteous and the bodies of the wicked; no more doth grace; the difference is more inward and deep; it is the soul begins to be glorified hereby; and hath the seed of eternal life put into it, when it doth pass the new birth; but the body is not changed with the soul; the body remains as it was, as frail, and weak, and exposed to diseases and death, as before, and as the body of any wicked person; and therefore the infectious disease of the plague coming into a populous city, the bodies of the righteous, amongst the rest,

receive the contagion, and they fall 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 hath been spoken of before, but the kind of death is the same.

So the fire doth make no discrimination between the houses of the godly, and the houses of the ungodly; they are all made of the same combustible matter, and are enkindled as bodies infected, one by another: indeed the godly have God to be their habitation, and they are citizens of the New Jerusalem, which is above; a city which hath 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 nor security for the preservation of their houses from fire here in this world. The judgments of the plague and fire being sent, work according to their nature, without distinguishing the righteous.

But if we further enquire into the reason, Why the plague was sent the last year, and such a plague as hath not been known these forty years; which raged so sorely, when there was no such sultriness of 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, neither do we read of in any history of any so great in any place in time of peace: what shall we say was the cause of these extraordinary national judgments, but the extraordinary national sins. It was an extraordinary hand of God which brought the plague, of which

no natural cause can be assigned why it should be so great that year more than in former years, but that sin was grown to greater height; and that a fire should prevail against all attempts to quench it, to burn down the city, and that judgment just following upon the heels of the other; what reason can be assigned, but that England's sins, and God's displeasure have been extraordinary; God is a God of patience, and it is not a light thing will move him; he is slow to anger, it must needs be then some great provocation which makes him so furious; he is highly offended, before he lifts up his hand; and he is exceedingly incensed, before his anger breaks forth into such a flame. For my part, I verily think, if it had not been for the crying abominations of the times, which are not chiefly to be limited to the city of London; and if the means of God's prescription, according to the rule of his Word, which England sometime could, had by England been made use of, that both plague and fire had been prevented.

Thirdly, moreover, it may be said that some particular persons, by some more peculiar and notorious sins in the city, may have provoked the Lord to bring punishment upon the whole place, if the land were not so generally profane and wicked. The heathen could say, "A whole city may be punished for the wickedness of one man :" yea, we read of David, though so good a man, yet when he numbered the people (a small sin in comparison with the sins of some others in our days) God was provoked to send such a dreadful plague, not on himself, but upon his people, that