Note 527 — Chapter IV

In 1696, there was a fire in Edinburgh; whereupon Moncrief, in his sermon next day, ‘told us, “That God's voice was crying to this city, and that he was come to the very ports, and was crying over the walls to us; that we should amend our ways, lest he should come to our city, and consume us in a terrible manner.” I cannot tell what this Dispensation of Providence wrought on me,’ &c. Memoirs or Spiritual Exercises of Elizabeth West, written by her own Hand, pp. 41, 42. See also, at pp. 122, 123, the account of another conflagration, where it is said, ‘there was much of God to be seen in this fire.’ Compare a curious passage in Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland, vol. vii. pp. 455, 456.