LONDON'S LAMENTATIONS.
' London's Lamentations,' as it is the largest, so it is perhaps the most remarkable contemporary memorial of the ' Great Fire.' It seems singular that Defoe does not appear to have known it, else his well known compilation might have been enriched by its vivid and powerful incidental notices of public opinion and feeling during and subsequent to the direful calamity. Reeve's ' Plea for Nineveh' — by Nineveh, London being intended — may be compared with the present work. Iioyalist and Puritan alike give terrible pictures of the licentiousness and general wickedness of the 'great city.' The title-page will be found below.*
* LONDON'S LAMENTATIONS :
A serious Discourse concerning that late fiery Dispensation that turned our (once renown- ed) City into a ruinous Heap. Also the several Lessons that are incumbent upon those whose ' Houses have escaped the consuming Flames.
By THOMAS BROOKS, late Preacher of the Word at
S. Margarets New- Fish-street, where that Fatal Fire first be- gan that turned London into a ruinous Heap.
Una dies interest inter magnam Civitatem & nullam. There is but the distance of one day between a great City and none, said Seneca when a great City was burnt to Ashes.
Come, behold the Works of the Lord, what Desolations he hath made in the Earth. Psal. 46. 8.
Printed for John Llancoch and Nathaniel Po7ider, and are to be sold at the
first Shop in Pojyes-He.ad- Alley in Cornhil, at the Sign of the Three
Bibles, or at his Shop in Bishojisgate-street, and at the Sign of
the Peacock in Chancery-lane. 1670.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
To the Eight Honourable Sir William Tukner, Knight, Lord Mayor of the City of London, i
Eight Honourable, — It is not my design to blazon your worth, or Avrite a panegyric of your praises. Your brighter name stands not in need of such a shadow as men's applause to make it more renowned in the world. Native worth is more respected than adventitious glory. ' Your own works praise you in the gates,' Prov. xxxi. 31. It is London's honour and happiness, tranquillity and prosjoerity, to have such a magistrate, that ' bears not the sword of justice in vain,' Eom. xiii. 4, and that hath not brandished the sword of justice in the defence of the friends of Baal, Balaam, or Bacchus. My Lord, had your sword of justice been a sword of protection to desperate swearers, or to cruel oppressors, or to deceitful dealers, or to roaring drunkards, or to cursing monsters, or to gospel despisers, or to Christ contemners, &c., might not London have lain in her ashes to this very day ? yea, might not God have rained hell out of heaven upon those parts of the city that were standing monuments of God's mercy, as once he did upon Sodom and Gomorrah ? Gen. xix. Woe to that sword that is a devouring sword to the righteous, to the meek, to the upright, and to the peaceable in the land, Ps. xxxv. 19, 20. 0 happy sword ! under which all sorts and ranks of men have worshipped God in peace, and lived in peace, and rested in peace, and traded in peace, and built their habitations in peace, and have grown up in peace. Sir, every man hath sat, under your sword, as under his own vine and fig-tree, in peace. Words are too weak to express how great a mercy this hath been to London, yea, I may say, to England. The ancients set forth all their gods with harps in their hands, the hieroglyphic of peace. The Grecians had the statue of Peace, with Pluto, the god of riches, in her arms. Some of the ancients were wont to paint peace in the form of a woman with a horn of plenty in her hands, viz., all blessings. The orator hit it when he said, Dulce nomen pads, The very name of peace is sweet. No city so happy as that wherein the chief magistrate has been as ' eyes to the
^ Of the Guild of Merchant Tailors : son of fTohn Turner of Kirk-Leedham in Cleve- land, Yorkshire. See Herbert's History of the Companies, ii. 426. This admirable magistrate won the praise of Eichard Baxter : Eeliquise Baxterianje, s. 11. — G.
4 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.
blind, legs to the lame, ears to the deaf, a father to the fatherless, a husband to the widow, a tower to the righteous, and a terror to the wicked,' Job xxxi.
Certainly rulers have no better friends than such as make conscience of their ways ; for none can be truly loyal but such as are truly reli- gious. Witness ]\Ioses, Joseph, Daniel, and the three children.'^ Sincere Christians are as lambs amongst lions, as sheep amongst wolves, as lilies amongst thorns. They are exposed more to the rage, wrath, and malice of wicked men, by reason of their holy profession, their gracious principles and practices, than any other men in all the world. Now did not God raise up magistrates, and spirit magistrates, to own them, to stand by them, and to defend them in all honest and just ways, how soon would they be devoured and destroyed ! Certainly the sword of the magistrate is to be di'awn forth for the natural good, and civil good, and moral good, and spiritual good, of all that live soberly and quietly under it. Stoloaeus^ tells us of a Persian law, that after the death of their king every man had five days' liberty to do what he pleased, that by beholding the wickedness and disorder of those few days, they might prize government the better all their days after. Certainly had some hot-headed, and little-witted, and fierce-spirited men had but two or three days' liberty to have done what they pleased in this great city during your lordship's mayoralty, they would have made sad work in the midst of us. When a righteous government fails, then (1.) Order fails; (2.) Keligion fails; (3.) Trade fails; (4.) Justice fails; (5.) Prosperity fails; (6.) Strength and power fails; (7.) Fame and honour fails; (8.) Wealth and riches fails; (9.) Peace and quiet fails ; (10.) All human converse and society fails. To take a righteous government out of the world, is to take the sun out of the firmament, and leave it no more a «ocr/xo9, a beautiful structure, but a Xcifxi, a confused heap. In such towns, cities, and kingdoms where righteous government fails, there every man's hand will be quickly en<>-aged against his brother. Gen. xxvi. 12. Oh the sins, the sorrows, the desolations, and destructions that will unavoidably break in like a flood u]:)on such a i)eople !