PODCAST · arts

Rescue from Death, with a Return of Praise

by Richard Sibbes

A sermon, preached after the cessation of the 1625-1626 plague in London, where "from above five thousand a week it is come to three persons". He expresses thankfulness "that there is free commerce and intercourse as before; that we can meet thus peaceably and quietly at God's ordinances, and about our ordinary callings". Sibbes' text is Psalm 107 verse 17: "Fools, because of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted" etc. "You know how God hath dealt of late with this city, and with ourselves indeed; for we are all of one body politic, and however God visited them, yet it was our sins also that provoked him. We brought sticks to the common fire. A physician lets the arm blood, but the whole body is distempered. God let the city blood, but the whole kingdom was in a distemper. So that it was for our sins as well as theirs. We all brought, I say, something to the common flame, and God afflicted us even in them. God hath now stayed the sickness almost as miracu