The fire began first on the side of the king's troops...

But for what?

Because they have made a noble stand for their natural and constitutional rights, in opposition to the machinations of wicked men...aiming to enslave and ruin the whole nation..."

Samuel Langdon continued: 

"We must keep our eyes fixed on the supreme government of the ETERNAL KING, as directing all events, setting up or pulling down the kings of the earth at His pleasure...

That for the sins of a people God may suffer the best government to be corrupted, or entirely dissolved; and that nothing but a general reformation can give ground to hope that the public happiness will be restored..."

Harvard President Langdon spoke further:

Their government degenerated in proportion as their vices increased, till few faithful men were left in any public offices...



At length, when they were delivered up for seventy years into the hands of the king of Babylon, scarcely any remains of their original excellent civil polity appeared among them..."

Langdon added: 

But vice will increase with the riches and glory of an empire; and this gradually tends to corrupt the constitution, and in time bring on its dissolution.

This may be considered not only as the natural effect of vice, but a righteous judgment of heaven, especially upon a nation which has been favored with the blessing of religion and liberty, and is guilty of undervaluing them; and eagerly going into the gratification of every lust..."

He went on: 

"They were a sinful nation...who had forsaken the Lord; and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger...

Every one loved gifts...they were influenced in every thing by bribery...they even justified and encouraged the murder of innocent persons to support their lawless power...

And God, in righteous judgment, left them to run into all this excess of vice to their own destruction, because they had forsaken Him...

The public greatly suffered, and the people groaned, and wished for better rulers and better management.

But in vain they hoped for a change...when the spirit of religion was gone, and the infection of vice was become universal.

The whole body being so corrupted, there could be no rational prospect of any great reformation in the state, but rather of its ruin..."

Rev. Langdon continued his address to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress: 

"Yet if a general reformation of religion and morals had taken place, and they had turned to God from all their sins --  

if they had again recovered the true spirit of their religion, God, by the gracious interpositions of His providence, would soon have found out methods to restore the former virtue of the state, and again have given them men of wisdom and integrity...