Note 32 — NO. VI.—NINEVEH.

Soon after the great fire of London, the rector of St. Michael, Queenhithe, preached a sermon before the Lord Mayor and corporation of London, in which he instituted a parallel between the cities of London and Nineveh, to show that unless the inhabitants of the former repented of their many public and private vices, and reformed their lives and manners, as did the Ninevites on the preaching of Jonah, they might justly be expected to become the objects of the signal vengeance of Heaven: putting them in mind of the many dreadful calamities that have, from time to time, befallen the English nation in general, and the great City of London in particular; and of the too great reason there was to apprehend some yet more signal vengeance from the hands of Omnipotence, since former judgments had not proved examples sufficient to warn and amend a very wicked people.