Thomas Brooks London Fire 1666 — E.A. Johnston

After Hurricane Milton, I sit in storm-ravaged Florida after having been without power for four days. I'm worn out and exhausted, much like my fellow Floridians. Yet I feel, friends, it's important to address the times we live in and not fear the opinion of man.

Reading London Fire Through Thomas Brooks

It is wise to take a pause to take a look back at history and see what wiser men have written on the activities of God with all the recent national calamities that have befallen our nation from fire and flood and hurricanes.

And while the modern church at large refuses to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of a provoked God in sending remedial judgments upon the land, it is time to restudy a historical document that does just that.

I consider it a high privilege to reintroduce a document that has largely been forgotten by the church and history. I want to strongly recommend, friends, the reading of the Puritan Thomas Brooks in his treatise on the London Fire of 1666 entitled, London's Lamentation, or A Serious Discourse Concerning the Late, Fiery Dispensation That Turned Our Once-Renowned City Into A Ruinous Heap.

The London Fire and Its Historical Witness

Also, the several lessons that are incumbent upon those whose houses have escaped the consuming flames. The devastation, the fire of London of 1666, followed on the heels of the great plague of 1665, which claimed the lives of an estimated 100 ,000 people, almost a quarter of London's population in 18 months.

The fire of 1666 swept through central London from September 2nd to September 6th, destroying the homes of 70 ,000 of the 80 ,000 inhabitants of the city. The conflagration destroyed 87 parish churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral, 40 company halls, and other significant properties, reducing them to a ruinous heap of ashes.

The fire engulfed the three western city gates of Ludgate, Newgate, and Aldersgate, part of a burnt wall that is still standing today. I saw it when I was in London myself and visited it. It's a reminder of that terrible tragedy.

Fortunately for the citizens of London, they had the Puritan Thomas Brooks as a resident and local pastor. For his fiery treatise in a sermonic address to the mayor of London has been a gift to the church then and ever since.

Brooks' lamentation ran 219 pages in length. Can you imagine a sermon today, friends, over 200 pages in length? And how many of you would actually sit long enough to hear it? Well, his was that long, and it was a necessary document to accompany the proclamation of Parliament in their Act for the Rebuilding of the City of London, which contained the clause that read, And that the said citizens and their successors for all the time to come may retain the memorial of so sad a desolation and reflect seriously upon their manifold iniquities, which are the unhappy causes of such judgments.

Public Fasting and Humiliation After the Fire

Be it further enacted that the 2nd of September be yearly forever hereafter observed as a day of public fasting and humiliation within the said city to make devout prayers and supplications unto him to divert the like calamity for the time to come.

Well, that's what that proclamation stated, friends. And as we can see from that parliamentary proclamation, there was a fear of God in the land back then that a secular-minded Parliament acknowledged the hand of God and the judgment of fire upon their sins and to issue a public proclamation to the citizens of London to observe an annual day of public fasting and humiliation stands in stark contrast to London of our day.

Even the skirt-chasing King Charles II issued a public proclamation in support of the same sentiments that as of Parliament his decree read as follows. His Majesty, therefore, of out of a deep and pious sense of what himself and all his people now suffer and with a religious care to prevent what may be yet feared unless it shall please Almighty God to turn away his anger from us doth hereby publish and declare his royal will and pleasure that Wednesday being the 10th of October next ensuing shall be set apart and kept and observed by all his majesties, subjects of England and Wales and the town of Berwick upon Tweed as a day of solemn fasting and humiliation to implore the mercies of God that would please him to pardon the crying sins of this nation, those especially which have drawn down this last and heavy judgment upon us and to remove from us all other his judgments which our sins have deserved and which we now either feel or fear.

Divine Judgment and the Modern Laodicean Church

It is imperative for the modern Laodicean church friends of our day to take note that both King and Parliament acknowledged that it was their collective sins that brought this divine judgment upon them and their city in the form of a devastating and consuming fire.

Would apostate England today make such a proclamation? Would apostate America today do the same in our day of sad spiritual declension that refuses that the God of the Bible is a God who must punish sin?

Brooks's God-Centered Theology of Calamity

The Puritans preached a God-centered gospel and lived God-centered lives to the glory of God. But the Puritan Thomas Brooks believed in a sovereign creator who keeps the world in order and is the one who causes all things to happen in their seasons and all events must pass through his providential hand.

Therefore, it was natural for Brooks' treatise to stem from his high view of God and use natural disasters and calamities as remedial judgments to draw mankind back to him. Even though this is a repugnant concept to many in the church today, we could benefit greatly if we took the time to read and study Brooks' treatise and learn at his feet.

This is especially needful when there is moral chaos in the land and spiritual declension in the church and apostasy within our denominations. Thomas Brooks knew his Bible and he knew well the God of the Bible.

The Thirteen Sins Behind London's Judgment

He felt God had sent a devastating fire to a city of London because God was angry at the sins of his people and their walking falsely with him. The inhabitants of London had grown more concerned with their businesses, lands, herds, and gold that God had taken a back seat in their daily living.

God sent the fire to consume their businesses and homes, the things that they were worshiping more than him. Brooks listed 13 predominant sins of the people of London that brought this divine judgment upon them.

They are listed as follows. Number one, gross atheism. Brooks states that atheism is a sin that brings desolating and destroying judgments upon a people. Then he quoted Zephaniah 112,. And it shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with candles and punish the men that are settled on their lees and say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil.

Number two, luxury and intemperance. He quotes Joel 1 5, Awake, ye drunkards, and weep, and howl, ye drinkers of wine. Public drunkenness was so prevalent in England in the days of even Wesleyan Whitfield a century later, as it was said that in London every fifth house was a gin house, and members of parliament often showed up for their duties dead drunk.

Number three, worldliness, extortion, deceit, bribery. Number four, desperate incorrigibleness and unreformedness. Number five, oppressing the poor. Number six, rejecting the gospel. Number seven, lying.

Number eight, fornication, going after strange flesh, homosexuality. Number nine, profanation of the Sabbath. Number ten, the profaneness, lewdness, blindness, and wickedness of the clergy. He cites Zephaniah 3, 4 through 6.

Her prophets are light and treacherous persons. Her priests have polluted the sanctuary. They have done violence to the law. The just Lord is on the midst thereof. He will not do iniquity. Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light.

He felleth not, but the unjust knoweth no shame. I have cut off the nations. Their towers are desolate. I made their streets waste, that none passeth by. Their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.

Number eleven, the sins of princes and rulers. Number twelve, the abusing, mocking, and despising of the messengers of the Lord. And lastly, number thirteen, the shedding of the blood of the just. He quotes, Rome had much of the blood of the saints upon her skirts.

Henry III, king of France, was a most cruel enemy to the Protestants. Sir Thomas More, once Lord Chancellor of England, was a sworn enemy to the gospel and persecuted the saints with fire and faggot. Those were the crying sins of London, listed by Thomas Brooks.

A Call to Repentance, Fasting, and Revival

London has not maintained her annual fast in over a hundred years. One wonders at what Thomas Brooks would think if he could peer out of heaven at modern, godless London today. But her grievous sins broke his heart in his day, and his lamentation on the fire of 1666 is a heart cry for repentance and reformation, not only to his fellow citizens, but to all the citizens of the world.

Let us acknowledge our sins, and the sins of our land, and the terrible judgments that are upon us, and let us turn back to the living God of the Bible in humiliation, fasting, repentance, and reformation.

Let us seek the face of God to send us not judgments upon us, but revival to us. Let each of us read Thomas Brooks's treatise on the London Fire and apply it to our lives for our day. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.