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

The ninth Support to bear up the hearts of the people of §9God under the late fiery dispensation, is this, viz. That there was a great mixture of mercy in that dreadful Judgement of fire that has turned London into a ruinous heap. At the final destruction of Jerusalem there was not one stone left upon ¹another. This might have been thy case O London, had not mercy triumphed over Justice, and over all the plots and designs of men. Though many thousand houses are destroyed, yet to the praise of free grace, many thousand houses in the City and Suburbs have been preserved from ⟨p. 86⟩the rage and violence of the flames. What a mercy w•s that, that Z•ar should be standing, when Sodom was laid in ashes? ²And what a mercy was this, that your houses should be standing, when so many thousand houses have been laid desolate? Is more than a third part of the City destroyed by fire? W•y the whole City might have been destroyed by fire, and all the Suburbs round about it. But in the midst of wrath, God has remembered mercy: in the midst of great severity ³God has exercised great clemency. Had the fire come on with that rage, fury and triumph, as to have laid both City and Suburbs level; we must have said with th• Church, The L•rd is righteous. Had the three Children their Songs ⁴in the midst of the fiery Furnace? and why should not they have their Songs of praise, whose houses by a miraculous Providen•e were preserved in the mi•st o• London's flames. O Sirs, what a mixture of mercy was there in this fiery calamity that all your lives should be spared, and that many of your houses should be preserved, and that much of your goods, your wares, your commodities, shoud be snatched as so many fire-brands out of the fire. If ever there were an obligation put upon a people, to cry Grace, Grace, Grace, the Lord has put one upon you, wo hve bn shrs in that mixture of mercy, that God has exended to he many thousand sufferers by Lndons flames. Had this Judgement of fire been inflcted, when te raging Pestilence swept away some thousands every Week, and when he City was even left naked as to her inhabitants, and when the whole Nation