mover in all lliin;^s, ami in all actions, may more fitly and properly be said to eftect and bring to })ass all judgments, yea, all things that are done in the earth, than any inferior or subordinate causes — seeing they are but his tools and instruments, which he rules and guides according to his own Avill, power, and providence. At this some of the more civilised heathen hath long since hammered, viz., that the same power dis})enseth both comforts and crosses, when they painted Fortune in two forms, with two faees of contrary colours, the foremost white, the hindermost black, to signify that both good and evil came from the goddess Fortune. When it was told prince Henry, that delicia generis Jiumani, that darling of mankind, ' that the sins of the people caused that affliction that was upon him \' ' Oh no,' said he, ' I have sins enough of mine own to cause that.' So should we all confess, that though God take occasion by another man's sin, or by another man's hand, to fire my house, yet the cause is just that it should be so, and that I myself have deserved it, whatsoever the occasion or the instrument be. God had matter enough against the seventy thousand that died of the plague ; though David's sin were the occasion, yet the meritorious cause was in them. Certainly there is no man that hath been a sufferer by this late dreadful fire, but upon an easy search into his own heart and life, he may find matter enough to silence himself, and to satisfy himself that, though God has turned him out of his habitation, and burnt up all his comforts round about him, yet he has done him no wrong. Surely in the burning of the city of London there was more of the extraordinary hand of God than there was of the hand of papist or atheist, Ezek. xxi. 31. God, if he had pleased, could have prevented brutish and skilful men to destroy and burn, by discovering of their hellish plots before they had taken effect, as he did Ahithophel's, 2 Sam. xvii. 10-24 ; and as he did Tobiah's and Sanballat's, Neh. iv. 7-16 ; and as he did the Jews' Avho took counsel to kill Paul, Acts ix. 23-25, and xxiii. 12-25 ; and as he did that of the GunpoAvder treason. And God could have directed and spirited men to the use of the means, and then have given such a blessing to the means, as should have been effectual to the quenching of it when it was first kindled ; but he would not, which is a clear evidence that he had given from heaven a commission to the fire to burn with that force and violence as it did, till all was laid in ashes.
Now that you may the better see and acknowledge the hand of the Lord in the late dreadful fire that has been amongst us, consider seriously with mo these ten following particulars : —
[1.] First, Consider ihc intemperate heat, the drought of the season. Such a hot and dry summer as that was has not been known for many years ; how by this means every man's habitation was as stubble, fully dry, prepared and fitted for the burning flames.^ Before God would strike fire he made our houses like tinder. When fuel is wet and green, what jnifflng and blowing must there be to kindle a fire, and to make it burn ! but when fuel is light and dry, it is so conceptive of fire, that even the very smell of fire puts it into a flame. And this
' Nahnm i. 10; Joel ii. 5. By this parching season evcrv m-in's house was prepared for fuel.
ISA. XLII. 24, 25.] THE LATE FIERY DISPENSATION. 131
was poor London's case ; for every man's house bad lain long a-sunning under the scorching beams of the sun and much brightness of weather, which made everything so dry and combustible that sparks and flakes of fire were sufiicient to set men's houses all in a flame about their ears. Now this finger of God we are neither to overlook nor yet deny ; it is our wisdom, as well as our work, to see not only the finger, but the hand of the Lord in every circumstance that relates to that sore judgment of fire that we are still sighing under, Exod. viii. 19. It is God that withholds seasonable showers, and that causeth it to rain upon one city and not upon another, Amos iv. 7. The earth cannot open her bowels, and yield seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, if not watered from above, 1 Kings xvii. 1, 2 ; nor the heaven cannot drop down fatness upon the earth if God close it up, and with- hold the seasonable showers. This the very heathens acknowledged in their fictions of Jupiter and Juno. God only can make the heavens as brass, and the earth as iron, and restrain the celestial influences. ' Can man bind the sweet influences of Pleiades ? or loose the bonds of Orion?' Job xxxviii. 31. Can any but God forbid the clouds to drop fatness ? Surely no. Beloved, drought and scantness of water upon a land, a city, &c., is a judgment of God. It is no small misery to have the streams dried up, when the fire is at our doors : l Jer. L 38, ' A drought is upon her waters ; and they shall be dried up : for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols : ' Jer. li. 35, 36, ' The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say ; and my blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say. Therefore thus saith the Lord ; Behold, I will plead my cause, and take vengeance for thee ; and I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry.' Now mark what follows : ver. 37, ' And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling- place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabi- tant.' When God comes to plead the cause of Zion against Babylon, not by words but by deeds, by blows, by terrible judgments — when he comes to burn up the inhabitants of Babylon, and to turn them out of house and home, he first dries up her sea, and makes her springs dry : Haggai i. 11, ' And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.' It is God that brings droughts and rain, and that opens and stops the clouds, the bottles of heaven, at his pleasure : Jer. xiv. 2-4, ' Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish ; they are .black unto the ground ; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up. And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters : they came to the pits, and found no water ; they returned with their vessels empty : they were ashamed and confounded, they covered their heads' — they mufiied up their heads and faces as a token of great