London's Suffering; London's Sin
Today, September 6, in 1666, Old Saint Paul's Cathedral in London burned to the ground in the Great London Fire.
Old St. Paul's was a centerpiece of Puritan outreach and the filth and worldliness within its courtyard was frequently alluded to in the preaching of the day. Booksellers peddled the latest Puritan works while other wares were also peddled: from vanity faire to the common whore; St. Paul's Walk had everything that your heart could desire.
Old St. Paul's construction began in 1087, following an earlier London Fire. As early as 604 a church was built on that location. One Pre-Norman scholar claimed that a Temple to Diana was toppled to begin the first St. Paul's Church. The massive church yard hosted rental booths that extended for hundreds of yards.
One scholar said, "St. Paul's was the very heart of the city [of London]." A pastor at the time said that St. Paul's offered everything from "the south alley for popery and usury, to the north for simony, and the horse fair in the midst for all kinds of bargains, meetings, brawling, murders, conspiracies, and the front for ordinary payment of money, as well known to all men as the beggar knows his bush."
St. Paul's was "as much a den of thieves as a house of prayer." On a daily basis St. Paul's welcomed "respectable citizens such as merchants, lawyers and their clients, but a various and colorful collection of crooks, con-men, and others."
The nave of St. Paul's was called "St. Paul's Walk" and it was once said at St. Paul's you would find the whole world gathering for their business, immigrants and various languages and all kinds of people. "Foot by foot and elbow by elbow shall you see walking the knight, the gull, the gallant, the upstart, the gentlemen, the clown, the captain, the apple-squire, the lawyer, the usurer, the citizen, the bankrupt, the scholar, the beggar, the doctor, the idiot, the ruffian, the cheater, the Puritan, the cut-throat..." The "fashionable new weed", tobacco, was sold in the courtyard as fiery sermons were preached from the outdoor pulpit. The Puritan bookstall was next to another bookseller who peddled the latest playbill or ballad. The next booth would sell unmentionables from under the desk.
From time to time St. Paul's courtyard hosted gallows for Jesuits or other malefactors. Fashion-center, nip-and-foist, hangout of "buggars and whores," tourist's trap, employment exchange, marketplace of ideas, and place of worship all made St. Paul's the center of Elizabethan and Puritan London.
One eye-witness to the burning of Old St. Paul's said, "the stones of Paules flew like granados, the lead mealting down the streetes in a streame, & the very pavements of them glowing with a fiery rednesse".
The Puritan Thomas Brooks would preach about the Great London Fire and the collapse of St. Paul's, calling his hearers to faith in Christ. He would write, "London's sufferings should warn others to take heed of London's sins. London's conflagration should warn others to take head of London's abominations. It should warn others to stand and wonder at the patience, long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness of God towards them who have deserved as hard things from the hand of God, as London has felt... It should warn others to search their hearts and try their ways and break off their sins and turn to the Lord, lest His anger should break forth in flames of fire against them. It should warn others to fear and tremble under that power, justice, severity, and sovereignty that shines in God's fiery dispensations toward us." -Thomas Brooks, London's Lamentations, Works: vi. 29.
