London's lamentation, or, A serious discourse concerning the late fiery dispensation that turned our…

'Tis not the ¹strength, nor riches, nor situation, nor trade, nor honour, nor fame, nor antiquity of a City that can preserve it, when God before-hand has by fire determined the destruction of it. Tyre was a City of the greatest Merchandising, 'twas a ²City of mighty Trade, they were set upon heaping up of riches by hook or by crook: So riches came in, though it •ere at the door of oppression, violence, or injustice, all was well. The Traffic of Tyre was great, and the sins that attended that Traffic were very great, and for these God sent a devouring fire amongst them, which destroyed their Palaces and Treasuries, and reduced their glorious City to ashes. By the iniquity of their Traffic they had built Palaces and stately Houses, and filled their Shops, and Ware-houses, and Cellars with rich and choice Commodities; but when God brought Nebuchadnezzar upon them, what the Chaldeans could not destroy by the Sword, they consumed by fire, turning all their glorious Palaces, and stately Buildings, and costly Shops and Ware-houses into ashes, as Historians testify: So Nineveh for greatness, riches, and antiquity, was one of the noblest Cities in the world, 'twas the Capital and chief City of the Assyrian Empire: and though God upon their repentance ³& humiliation did spare them for a time; yet afterwards she returning to her old trade of robberies, covetousness, extortions, fraud, deceitful dealings, &c. God delivered her up as a prey into the hands of many of her enemies, who wonderfully spoiled and pillaged her; and at last God gave her into the hands of the Medes, who brought her to a final and irrecoverable desolation, according to the Prophecy of the Prophet Nahum, Nahum 2. 10. She is empty, and void, •nd waste, and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, •nd much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness (that is, such blackness as is on the sides of a pot.) ⟨p. 87⟩