of them
fell in the calamity and in the discharge of their duty.

It is true some of the Dissenting turned-out ministers stayed, and
their courage is to be commended and highly valued--but these were not
abundance; it cannot be said that they all stayed, and that none retired
into the country, any more than it can be said of the Church clergy
that they all went away. Neither did all those that went away go without
substituting curates and others in their places, to do the offices
needful and to visit the sick, as far as it was practicable; so that,
upon the whole, an allowance of charity might have been made on both
sides, and we should have considered that such a time as this of 1665 is
not to be paralleled in history, and that it is not the stoutest courage
that will always support men in such cases. I had not said this, but had
rather chosen to record the courage and religious zeal of those of both
sides, who did hazard themselves for the service of the poor people in
their distress, without remembering that any failed in their duty on
either side. But the want of temper among us has made the contrary
to this necessary: some that stayed not only boasting too much of
themselves, but reviling those that fled, branding them with cowardice,
deserting their flocks, and acting the part of the hireling, and the
like. I recommend it to the charity of all good people to look back and
reflect duly upon the terrors of the time, and whoever does so well see
that it is not an ordinary strength that could support it. It was not
like appearing in the head of an army or charging a body of horse in the
field, but it was charging Death itself on his pale horse; to stay was
indeed to die, and it could be esteemed nothing less, especially
as things appeared at the latter end of August and the beginning of
September, and as there was reason to expect them at that time; for no
man expected, and I dare say believed, that the distemper would take so
sudden a turn as it did, and fall immediately two thousand in a week,
when there was such a prodigious number of people sick at that time as
it was known there was; and then it was that many shifted away that had
stayed most of the time before.

Besides, if God gave strength to some more than to others, was it to
boast of their ability to abide the stroke, and upbraid those that had
not the same gift and support, or ought not they rather to have been
humble and thankful if they were rendered m