ght, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkish
predestinarianism,[263] they would say, if it pleased God to strike
them, it was all one whether they went abroad, or staid at home: they
could not escape it. And therefore they went boldly about, even into
infected houses and infected company, visited sick people, and, in
short, lay in the beds with their wives or relations when they were
infected. And what was the consequence but the same that is the
consequence in Turkey, and in those countries where they do those
things, namely, that they were infected too, and died by hundreds and
thousands?

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 to pull down, and to
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 from infection, and 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, a