y or other, I always found that to appoint
to go away was always crossed by some accident or other, so as to
disappoint and put it off again; and this brings in a story which
otherwise might be thought a needless digression, viz., about these
disappointments being from Heaven.

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any person to
take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes conscience of
his duty, and would be directed what to do in it, namely, that he should
keep his eye upon the particular providences which occur at that time,
and look upon them complexly, as they regard one another, and as all
together regard the question before him: and then, I think, he may
safely take them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned
duty to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying in
the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious distemper.

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on this
particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the direction or
permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments must have something
in them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it did not
evidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the will of Heaven I
should not go. It immediately followed in my thoughts, that if it really
was from God that I should stay, He was able effectually to preserve
me in the midst of all the death and danger that would surround me; and
that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my habitation, and
acted contrary to these intimations, which I believe to be Divine, it
was a kind of flying from God, and that He could cause His justice to
overtake me when and where He thought fit.

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came to
discourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to stay and
take my lot in that station in which God had placed me, and that it
seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the account of what I have
said.

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I had
suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me several
stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was; that I
ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way
disabled by distempers or diseases, and that then not being able to go,
I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having been my Maker,
had a