istory of the English People, chap. ix, sec. 2; and for a more
detailed account, see Lingard, History of England, enlarged edition of
1849, vol. ix, pp. 107 et seq. For full scientific discussion of this
and other plagues from a medical point of view, see Creighton, History
of Epidemics in Great Britain, vol. ii, chap. i. For the London plague
as a punishment for Sabbath-breaking, see A Divine Tragedie lately
acted, or A collection of sundry memorable examples of God's judgements
upon Sabbath Breakers and other like libertines, etc., by the worthy
divine, Mr. Henry Burton, 1641. The book gives fifty-six accounts of
Sabbath-breakers sorely punished, generally struck dead, in England,
with places, names, and dates. For a general account of the condition of
London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the diminution of
the plague by the rebuilding of some parts of the city after the great
fire, see Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i,
pp. 592, 593. For the jail fever, see Lecky, vol. i, pp. 500-503.

The same thing was seen in the Protestant colonies of America; but
here, while plagues were steadily attributed to Divine wrath or
Satanic malice, there was one case in which it was claimed that such
a visitation was due to the Divine mercy. The pestilence among the
INDIANS, before the arrival of the Plymouth Colony, was attributed in
a notable work of that period to the Divine purpose of clearing New
England for the heralds of the gospel; on the other hand, the plagues
which destroyed the WHITE population were attributed by the same
authority to devils and witches. In Cotton Mather's Wonder of the
Invisible World, published at Boston in 1693, we have striking examples
of this. The great Puritan divine tells us:

"Plagues are some of those woes, with which the Divil troubles us. It
is said of the Israelites, in 1 Cor. 10. 10. THEY WERE DESTROYED OF THE
DESTROYER. That is, they had the Plague among them. 'Tis the Destroyer,
or the Divil, that scatters Plagues about the World: Pestilential and
Contagious Diseases, 'tis the Divel, who do's oftentimes Invade us with
them. 'Tis no uneasy thing, for the Divel, to impregnate the Air
about us, with such Malignant Salts, as meeting with the Salt of
our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into that Fermentation and
Putrefaction, which will utterly dissolve All the Vital Tyes within us;
Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a conjunction of Nitre and Vitr