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

but instead of finding out the plague of their hearts, and mourning over the Plague of their ¹hearts, and repenting of the evil of their doings, and teturning to the Most High, they returned to their fins and their Trades together; from both which for a time the Plague had frighted them; concluding in themselves, that surely the bitterness of death was past. They thought that the worst was past, and that after so dreadful a storm they ²should have a blessed calm; and dreamed of nothing but peace, and quiet, and safety, and Trade; striving with all their might to make up those losses, that they had sustained by ⟨p. 9⟩the Pestilence. They having escaped the Grave, when so many score thousands were carried to their long homes, were very secure; they never thought, that the City, which had been so lately infected by a contagious Plague, was so near ³being buried in its own ruins: they never imagined, that the whole City should be put in flames, to purge that Air that their sins had infected. And therefore no wonder if desolation came upon them suddenly, in a moment, in one day. No marvel that so great a Fire was kindled in the very heart of the City, and they not see the hand that kindled it, nor have no hands nor hearts to quench it. Judgements are never so near, as when men are most secure, 1 Thess. 5. 3. The old world was very secure until the very day that Noah entered into the Ark. Luke 17. 27. They did eat, they drank they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the Ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Luther observeth, that it was in the Spring that the flood came, when every thing was in its prime and pride, and nothing less looked for than a flood: They neither believed, nor regarded Noah's preaching, nor his preparations for his own and his children's security; but merrily passed without intermission, from eating to drinking, and from drinking to marriage till the very day that the flood came and swept them all away. Their destruction was foretold them to a day, but they were drowned in security, and would take no notice of Noah's predictions, nor their own peril. They had made their guts their God; they had buried their wits in their guts, and their brains in their bellies: and so were neither awakened, nor bettered by any thing, that either Nah said or did; and so they perished suddenly and unexpectedly.