time, and when it was come to its
height, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkish
predestinarianism, they would say, if it pleased God to strike them, it
was all one whether they went abroad or stayed 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 judgements 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 judgement 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 judgement, to go on in the ordinar