In delving among what may be termed the popular religious literature of the latter years of the Commonwealth, and early part of the reign of Charles, we become aware of the existence of a kind of nightmare which the public of that age were evidently labouring under--a strong and vivid impression that some terrible calamity was impending over the metropolis. Puritanic tolerance was sorely tried by the licence of the new Court; and the pulpits were soon filled with enthusiasts of all sects, who railed in no measured terms against the monster city--the city Babylon--the bloody city! as they loved to term her: proclaiming with all the fervour of fanaticism that the measure of her iniquities was well nigh full, and the day of her extinction at hand. The press echoed the cry; and for some years before and after the Restoration, it teemed with "warnings" and "visions," in which the approaching destruction is often plainly predicted. One of the earliest of these prefigurations occurs in that Leviathan of Sermons, _God's Plea for Nineveh, or London's Precedent for Mercy_, by Thomas Reeve: London, 1657. Speaking of London, he says: It was Troy-novant, it is Troy le grand, and it will be Troy l'extinct."--P. 217. {80} And again: "Methinks I see you bringing pick-axes to dig downe your owne walls, and kindling sparks that will act all in a flame from one end of the city to the other."--P. 214. And afterwards, in a strain of rough eloquence: "This goodly city of yours all in shreds, ye may seek for a threshold of your antient dwellings, for a pillar of your pleasant habitations, and not find them; all your spacious mansions and sumptuous monuments are then gone.... Wo unto us, our sins have pulled down our houses, shaken down our city; we are the most harbourlesse featlesse people in the world.... Foxes have holes, and the fowls of the air nests, but we have neither; our sins have deprived us both of couch and covert. What inventions shall ye then be put to, to secure yourselves, when your sins shall have shut up all the conduits of the city, and suffer only the Liver conduit to run[3]; when they allow you no showers of rain, but showers of blood; when ye shall see no men of your incorporation, but the mangl'd citizen; nor hear no noise in your streets but the crys, the shrieks, the yells and pangs of gasping, dying men; when, amongst the throngs of associates, not a man will own you or come near you," &c.--Pp. 221. _et seq._ After alluding to the epidemics of former ages, he thus alludes to the coming plague: