and
implore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgement which hung over
their heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the
people of all persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked to
the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there was
often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches.
Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at several
churches, and days of private praying at other places; at all which
the people attended, I say, with an uncommon devotion. Several private
families also, as well of one opinion as of another, kept family fasts,
to which they admitted their near relations only. So that, in a word,
those people who were really serious and religious applied themselves
in a truly Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and
humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.

Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in these
things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a face
of just concern for the public danger. All the plays and interludes
which, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up, and began
to increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming-tables, public
dancing-rooms, and music-houses, which multiplied and began to debauch
the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and the
jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like
doings, which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops,
finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were agitated with
other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon
the countenances even of the common people. Death was before their
eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not of mirth and
diversions.

But even those wholesome reflections--which, rightly managed, would have
most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession of
their sins, and look up to their merciful Saviour for pardon, imploring
His compassion on them in such a time of their distress, by which we
might have been as a second Nineveh--had a quite contrary extreme in
the common people, who, ignorant and stupid in their reflections as
they were brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their
fright to extremes of folly; and, as I have said before, that they
ran to conjurers and witches, and all sorts of deceivers, to know what
should becom