Consider the suddenness of judgment. Who among all the burnt citizens did ever expect to see London laid in ashes in four days time? God's judgments many times seize upon men's persons, houses, and estates, as the soldiers did Archimedes whilst he was busy drawing lines in the dust. Isa. lxiv. 3. 'When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for.' When the citizens saw London in flames, they might truly have said, This is a terrible thing, which we looked not for; we were minding our own business, our shops, our trades, our profits, our pleasures, our delights; we were studying and plotting, and contriving how to make ourselves and our children great and rich, and high and honorable in the earth, and it never entered into our thoughts that the destruction of London by fire was so near at hand as now we have found it to be. Isa. xlvii. 7-9, 11. 'Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart,' (which things were the judgments of God that were threatened.). 'neither didst remember the latter end of it. Therefore hear now this, that thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly; that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children; but these two things shall come to thee in a moment, in one day, the loss of children and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection. Evil shall come upon thee; and thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.' Was not London the lady-city of our land? Did the inhabitants of London lay those judgments of God to heart that they either felt or feared? Did London remember her latter end? Were not most of the inhabitants of London given to sinful pleasures and delights? Did they not live carelessly and securely? Were they ever so secure and inapprehensive of their danger than at this very time when the flames broke forth in the midst of them? They had newly escaped the most sweeping plague that ever was in the city and suburbs, but instead of finding out the plague of their hearts, and mourning over the plague of their hearts, and repenting of the evil of their doings, and returning to the Most High, 1 Kings viii. 37, 38; Isa. ix. 13-15; Jer. viii. 6, they returned to their sins 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 and that after so dreadful a storm they should 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 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 being burned 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. Judgments are never so near, as when men are most secure. 1 Thess. v3. [Thomas Brooks]
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