Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/352



ANIFOLD have been the judgments, which Heaven from time to time for the chastisement of a sinful people has inflicted on whole nations. For when the degeneracy becomes common, 'tis but just the punishment should be general: of this kind, in our own unfortunate country, was that destructive pestilence, whose mortality was so fatal, as to sweep away, if sir William Petty may be believed, five millions of christian souls, beside women and Jews.

Such also was that dreadful conflagration ensuing, in this famous metropolis of London, which consumed, according to the computation of sir Samuel Morland, one hundred thousand houses, not to mention churches and stables.

Scarce had this unhappy nation recovered these funeste disasters, when the abomination of playhouses rose up in this land; from hence hath an inundation of obscenity flowed from the court and overspread the kingdom: even infants disfigured the walls of holy temples with exorbitant representations of the members of generation; nay, no sooner had they learnt to