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Rescue from Death, with a Return of Praise

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 miraculously as he sent it. It was a wonder that so many should be swept away in so short a time. It is almost as great a wonder that God should stay it so soon. And what may we impute it unto? Surely as it is in the text: 'They cried unto the Lord'."
- Summary by InTheDesert and Richard Sibbes