ey had in their
cart, for sometimes they were let down with ropes out of balconies and
out of windows; and sometimes the bearers brought them to the cart,
sometimes other people; nor, as the men themselves said, did they
trouble themselves to keep any account of the numbers.

THE PLAGUE DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the
reverence to his Providence, which ought always to be on our minds on
such occasions as these; doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke
from heaven upon a city, or country, or nation where it falls, a
messenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country,
or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophet
Jeremiah, xviii. 7, 8: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and pull down, and destroy
it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Now to prompt
due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions,
and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those minutes upon
record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those
things upon the immediate hand of God, and the appointment and direction
of his Providence; nay, on the contrary there were many wonderful
deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular and
remarkable Providence in the particular instances to which they refer;
and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do
record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural
causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural
means; nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under the
conduct of human causes and effects: for as the Divine power has formed
the whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so the
same power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercy
or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he
is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means;
excepting and reserving to himself nevertheless a power to act in a
supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident that in the
case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for
supernatural operation, but the ordinary course of things appears
sufficiently