LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 2(13 ofgoods, and sumptuous buildings, curious rooms, costly furniture, and household stuff, yea, warehouses, and furnished shops, and libraries, all on a flame, and none durst come near to receive any thing ;to see the king and nobles ride abqut the streets, behold- ing all those desolations, andnone could afford the least relief; to see the air, as far as could be beheld, so filled with the smoke that the sun shined through it with a color like blood. But the dole- fulest sight of all was afterwards, to see what a ruinous confused place the citywas, by chimneys and steeples only, standing in the midst of cellars and heaps ofrubbish; so that it.was hard to know where the streets had been, and dangerous, for a long time,to pass through the ruins because of vaults and fire in them. No man that seeth not such a thingcan have a right apprehensionof the dreadfulness of it." "This is the third terrible judgment which London suffered since the king's return. First, many scoreoftheir faithful teachers were silenced and cast out, and afterwards banished or confined five miles from the city. Next, the plague, and other sickness, consumed about an hundred thousand. And when they began to be settled in their habitations again, the flames devoured their houses and their substance. And it is not hard for the reader here to imagine how many thousands this must needs cast intoutter want and beggary; and howmany thousands of the formerly rich were disabled from relieving them. And, at the same time, so many hundred families of silencedministers tobe relieved, that looked to London most for help." "But some good rose out of all these evils. The churches being burnt, and the parish ministers gone, for want of places and main- tenance, the nonconformists were now more resolved than ever to preach till theywere imprisoned." Many of themkept their meet- ings very openly, "and prepared large rooms, and some of them plainchapels,with pulpits, seats, and galleries, for the reception of as many as could come. The people's necessity was now unques- tionable. They had none other to hear, save in a fewchurches, that would hold no considerable part of them; so that to forbid them to hear the nonconformists, was all one as to forbid them all public worship ; to forbid them to seek heaven, when they had lost almost all that they had on earth ; to take from them their spiritual comforts, after all their outwardcomforts were gone."t During the following year, the public calamities, including the ill success of the war in which the king was engagedwith the Dutch, conspired with some other causes to effect the overthrow of Lord Clarendon, the prime minister, who had been the author Narrative, Part III. p. 18. t Narrative, Part III. p.19.
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