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

First, The bloody Sword is a more dreadful Judgement, §1than that of fire. Fire may consume a mans house, and his estate; but the Sword cuts off a mans life. Now at what a poor rate, do men value the whole world, when it stands in competition with their lives. He very well knew, that man was a very great life lover, who said, Skin for skin (or ¹skin upon skin) and all that a man hath, will he give for his life. God might have brought upon England, I, and upon London too, the Sword of a foreign enemy, as he did upon Jerusalem and the Land of Judea. In that one only City of Jerusalem, during the time or the siege by Vespasians Armies, which ²were made up of Romans, Syrians and Arabians, there died and were killed, a thousand thousand. At this time there were slain in all Judea, in several places, to the number of twelve hundred and forty thousand Jews. The whole City of Jerusalem flowed with blood, insomuch that many parts of the City that were set on fire, were quenched by the blood of them that were slain. In seventeen years time the Carthaginian War only in Italy, Spain and Sicily, consumed and wasted, fifteen hundred thousand men. The Civil Wars between Pompey and Caesar, swallowed down three hundred thousand men. Caius Caesar did confess it, and gloried in it, that eleven hundred ninety and two thousand men were killed by him in Wars. Pompey the great writ upon Minerva's Temple, that he had scattered, chased and killed twenty hundred eighty and three thousand men. Q. Fabius killed an hundred and ten thousand of the Gauls. C. Marius put to the sword two hundred thousand of the Cimbrians. Aetius in that memorable battle of Catalonia, slew an hundred ⟨p. 92⟩sixty and two thousand Huns. Who can number up the many thousands, that have fallen by the bloody sword in Europe, from the year 1620 to this year 1667. Ah London, London, thy Streets might have flowed with the blood of the ••am; as once the Streets of Jerusalem, Paris, and others have done. Whilst the fire was a devouring thy stately •ouses a•d Palaces, a Foreign Sword might have been a destroying thine inhabitants. Whilst the furious flames were consuming thy goods, thy wares, thy substance, thy riches, a close and secret enemy, spirited, counselled, and animated from Rome and Hll, might have risen up in the midst of the;