Venator Veritatis
Puritan Board Freshman
Speaking in the context of the recent plauge and the great London fire Thomas Vincent says the following about God's righteousness in bringing about the judgment:
"He is a great stranger in England that doth not know how wickedness hath abounded in the later years; his eyes must be fast shut, who doth not see what a deluge of profaneness and impiety hath broken in like a mighty torrent and overflowed the land; that hath not taken notice of those barefaced villianies which have been commited amongst us, which is a greater question whether any ages before us could parallel: we read in Scripture of Sodom and Gomorrah and the wickedness of Jerusalem...but who can equal England, which calls itself Christian and Protestant, for such desperate and audacious affronts and indignities which have been offered to the highest Majesty by our gallants (as they were called) of our time. How was hell, as it were, broke loose ; and how were men worse than those which, in our Savior's time, were possessed with devils, who cut themselves with stones, and tore their own flesh; even such who went about like so many hell hounds and incarnate devils, cursing and banning, swearing and blaspheming, inventing new oaths, and glorying therein, delighting to tear the name of God, and to spit forth their rancour and malice in His very face? And can we be at a loss for a reason of God's righteousness in thus punishing England by beginning thus furiously with London?"
Oh that God would grant our own lands repentance, and would that we would pray and plead at the throne of grace to that end. How much farther have we fallen even from the times when this was written.
"He is a great stranger in England that doth not know how wickedness hath abounded in the later years; his eyes must be fast shut, who doth not see what a deluge of profaneness and impiety hath broken in like a mighty torrent and overflowed the land; that hath not taken notice of those barefaced villianies which have been commited amongst us, which is a greater question whether any ages before us could parallel: we read in Scripture of Sodom and Gomorrah and the wickedness of Jerusalem...but who can equal England, which calls itself Christian and Protestant, for such desperate and audacious affronts and indignities which have been offered to the highest Majesty by our gallants (as they were called) of our time. How was hell, as it were, broke loose ; and how were men worse than those which, in our Savior's time, were possessed with devils, who cut themselves with stones, and tore their own flesh; even such who went about like so many hell hounds and incarnate devils, cursing and banning, swearing and blaspheming, inventing new oaths, and glorying therein, delighting to tear the name of God, and to spit forth their rancour and malice in His very face? And can we be at a loss for a reason of God's righteousness in thus punishing England by beginning thus furiously with London?"
Oh that God would grant our own lands repentance, and would that we would pray and plead at the throne of grace to that end. How much farther have we fallen even from the times when this was written.
