Errors should be favourably construed from so great an Aim of doing the
Publick so great a Good; and it would be esteemed a base Ingratitude,
meerly for the sake of Contradiction, to quarrel with the Hand that
directs, and may support us in the greatest Extremity.

But where there may be a sufficient Reason to undeceive, or amend such
Errors, as might otherwise be prejudicial to their intended Purpose of
preserving the Common Weal, or advancing some other necessary
Instructions which they have omitted; I can't but perswade myself that I
shall have their Approbation, if not their Thanks in prosecuting the
Advancement of that good End they so greatly have desired in their
Publications.

It is very certain, that Essay of Doctor _Hodges de Peste_, is the best of
any hitherto publish'd of that Kind; and if the Gentleman who has annex'd
his Treatise to that of his own, has taken Care to remove the most
affected Peculiarities, and Luxuriances of his Enthusiastick Strain, he
should have avoided that Contagion himself, which are discover'd in his
crabbed and dogmatical Terms of _Formulae_, _Miasms_, _Miasmata_, _Nexus_,
_Moleculae_, _Spicula_, _Pabulum_, &c. Such Terms being too abstruse and
difficult to be understood by the People in general, for whose
Instruction and Benefit we have the Charity to believe he undertook his
Publication. Nay, it cannot be doubted, and will need no Confirmation by
those that carefully peruse Dr. _Hodges_, but will find that there is
scarcely any advanced Method in what they have writ, or but what may be
found in his Treatise, unless in this one Hint of _Quincy_, from the Use
of _Pulvis Fluminans_ in dispersing the stagnate Air instead of the fucing
of great Guns, _&c._ And he is no ways out in his Policy by tacking his
own Remarks with those of the good old Doctors, which are the best
Recommendations of their passing to his own Advantage.

_Hodges_ in his Introduction tells you, "That the first Discoveries of the
late Plague began in _Westminster_, about the Close of the Year 1664, for
at that Season two or three Persons died there, attended with like
Symptoms as manifestly declar'd their Origin; that in the Months of
_August_ and _September_, the Contagion chang'd its former slow and
languid Pace, having, as it were, got Master of all, made a most terrible
Slaughter, so that three, four or five thousand died in a Week, and once
eight thousand: Who can express the Calamities of those Times! None