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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
NARRATIVES 
 
 •nVO FAMILIES EXPOSED TO THE 
 
 GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON, 
 
 A. D. 1665; 
 
 WITH 
 
 CONVERSATIONS 
 
 ON 
 
 RELIGIOUS PREPARATION FOR PESTILENCE. 
 
 REPUBLISHED, WITH XOTES AND OBSERVATIONS, 
 
 BY JOHN SCOTT, M. A. 
 
 VirAR or NORTH FERRIBY, AND MINISTER OF S. MARY's, HULL, 
 ETC. 
 
 MISCL'IT UTILE Dt'LCI. 
 
 PRINTED FOR R. B. SEELEY AND W. BURNSIDE 
 AND SOLD BY L. B. SEELEY AND SONS, 
 FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
 MDCCCXXXII. 
 
 cy 
 
 4^:, 
 
fRIKTJSD BT L. B. SKELEV AND SDKS, WESTOK GREEN, 
 THAMES DITTON. 
 
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 r^ 
 
 ^' r^Q, 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 Some four or five and thirty years ago 
 my attention was attracted, at a book- 
 stall in London, to a small duodecimo 
 volume, neatly bound, and lettered on 
 the back, '' plague for soul and 
 BODY." The title page furnished the 
 rectification of this grotesque labelling : 
 '' Preparations for the Plague, (Prepa- 
 rations^ as well for Soul as Body." 
 — The work is anonymous — printed 
 at London '* for E. Matthews at the 
 Bible, and J. Batley at the Dove, in 
 •Paternoster Row," in 1722. This was a 
 time when the plague, which had com- 
 a 2 
 
 X 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 menced at Marseilles in 1720, was still 
 raging in France, and was making such 
 progress towards our own shores as in- 
 duced the government of that day to 
 adopt measures, similar to those which 
 are now employed to prevent, by the 
 blessing of God upon them, the intro- 
 duction or diffusion of another fatal 
 disease amongst us, which is calculated 
 to have carried off, in various parts of 
 the world, as many as fifty millions of 
 our fellow creatures within the last four- 
 teen years! — In particular we may 
 observe, that at the period referred to 
 those prayers were first introduced, 
 which are now by public authority again 
 used amongst us.^ 
 
 I purchased for sixpence the little 
 volume I have described : and, on perus- 
 ing it, found it to contain, in the form of 
 a history of a family shut up in London 
 at the time, an Account of the great 
 plague of A. D. 1665, which is highly 
 
 ^ Christian Observer, Nov. 1831. 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 interesting and affecting, and at the same 
 time free from those minute and revolt- 
 ing descriptions, which sometimes make 
 us turn away from such narratives with 
 horror. This is followed by a series of 
 Conversations between the members of 
 another family, exposed to the same 
 awful visitation, on the spiritual prepa- 
 ration requisite to fortify the mind in the 
 prospect of such a calamity, and to 
 secure our meeting it unharmed, if it 
 should really come. 
 
 Several friends, to whom I lent the 
 volume, read it with no less gratification 
 than it had afforded me : and, during 
 the many years that I have now had a 
 family about me, it has been so much a 
 favourite among them, that I found I 
 could seldom afford a greater treat to 
 my children, than by allowing them the 
 use of *' the Plague Book." 
 
 The Conversations I conceive to be of 
 a highly useful character, as well as 
 entertaining. Very forcibly indeed do 
 a 3 
 
t^l PREFACE. 
 
 they seem to me to press upon the con- 
 science the necessity of living prepared 
 for death and eternity ; strikingly illus- 
 trating the happy effects of so doing on 
 the one hand, and, on the other, the un- 
 happy consequences which follow from 
 the neglectof it, whenever danger arises. 
 On these grounds, and in consider- 
 ation of the scarcity of the book — of 
 which I have never seen, or, properly 
 speaking, heard of another copy — ^ I 
 have often entertained the thoughts of 
 reprinting it, at least in an abridged 
 form. This, however, has hitherto re- 
 mained among my unexecuted purposes. 
 I hope the work may have been reserved 
 
 • In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1825 appeared, in the 
 numbers for April and July, some extracts from the narrative 
 portion of both parts of the work — communicated by Mr. W. 
 Hamilton Reid. That gentleman, however, did not point out 
 the source from which he had derived them ; but only observed 
 that they were " not in any popular author that he had read," 
 but were " among the many traits of former times collected 
 during his limited researches into the antiquities of the great 
 city." From the Gentleman's, the first, at least, of the ex- 
 tracts was transferred to the pages of the Youth's Magazine — 
 an evidence that it was esteemed interesting. 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 for a time when it may be more season- 
 able, and therefore more useful. To young 
 persons, in particular, I dare promise 
 that it will afford much interesting in- 
 formation ; while I hope it may at the 
 same time, by the blessing of God, make 
 very salutary impressions on their hearts. 
 
 In republishing, however, I have not 
 thought it necessary to give the whole 
 of the volume. It contains discussion 
 on the contagious nature of the plague, 
 (which- was then disputed, as that of the 
 Cholera is now,) and many things on 
 medical and economical provision against 
 it, which do not concern general readers, 
 or perhaps readers of any class in the 
 present day. All these therefore I 
 have dropped ; and other parts I have 
 abridged : thus reducing the former 
 division of the work by more than one 
 half. The latter division admitted of 
 less retrenchment : though this also is 
 reduced in size. 
 
 As no known author was answerable 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 for the work, I have felt myself at full 
 liberty to correct the language, where 
 this appeared to be necessary. It is 
 written in an easy, natural, and lively 
 style, but with considerable grammatical 
 inaccuracy, especially in the pointing 
 and division of the sentences. This I 
 have endeavoured to remove : but I have 
 in no case knowingly altered the senti- 
 ment. 
 
 The period at which the volume was 
 published was an unfavourable one, as 
 respects pure Christian light and know- 
 ledge. The extravagances of the times 
 preceding the restoration, and the pro- 
 fane and licentious reign of Charles II. 
 which followed, had conspired to bring 
 devout religion, and evangelical truth, 
 into disrepute and oblivion : from which 
 they had not yet emerged again. Hence 
 it might be supposed that the religious 
 principles of the work would need some 
 correction. To a certain degree, though 
 much short of what would, perhaps. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 have been expected, this is the case ; 
 and I have attempted to supply that 
 correction in notes, in a manner w^hich I 
 hope may assist those vs^hose viev^s are 
 not yet fully formed. But the fact is, 
 that the writer's principles are essentially 
 sound and good. He admits some ex- 
 pressions which may be a little revolting 
 to our ears, and he defers too long the 
 distinct enunciation of the Gospel ; but 
 it is at length developed, and applied in 
 a very delightful manner. The temper 
 and state of mind which are described 
 as being produced, and as alone consti- 
 tuting the right preparation for meeting 
 the pestilence in peace, or, in other 
 words, for death and eternity, are, in 
 my judgment, thoroughly Christian, and 
 formed upon Christian principles. With 
 the slight corrections, therefore, which 
 are here furnished, I can confidently 
 commit the book to the reader — com- 
 mending both him and it to the blessing 
 of Almighty God. 
 
X PREFACE, 
 
 I subjoin one paragraph from the 
 Author's preface. After adverting to the 
 '' proclamations, orders of council, di- 
 rections for ships performing quaran- 
 tine," at the period in which he wrote ; 
 and even to Parliament's " putting the 
 nation to the expense of £25,000, to 
 burn two Turkish ships which were sus- 
 pected to have goods on board that 
 might contain the infection," he pro- 
 ceeds : '' With respect to our religious 
 preparations .... I have seen, I may- 
 say, nothing at all offered to the public. 
 On the contrary, the whole world is in- 
 tent and busy on their ordinary occa- 
 sions : men pursue the usual course of 
 the world ; they push their interest, 
 their gain, or their pleasures and gaiety, 
 with the same gust, or rather more than 
 ever ; nay, the cry of the nation's follies 
 grows louder and louder every day : and 
 so far we are from considering that, 
 when God's judgments are abroad in the 
 earth, the inhabitants should learn right- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 eousness ; that we are rather learning to 
 be more superlatively wicked than ever. 
 Witness the increase of plays and play- 
 houses, one being now building, though 
 so many are already in use : witness the 
 public trading and stock-jobbing on the 
 Sabbath-day: witness the raging avarice 
 of the times, by which the civil interest 
 of the nation is ruined and destroyed : 
 witness, also, our feuds, divisions, and 
 heats, as well in religious differences, as 
 those that are political, which are all 
 carried up to dreadful extremes." 
 
 Alas ! that in successive ages, and 
 under the most threatening aspects of 
 Providence, the ministers of religion, 
 and seriously-minded persons in general, 
 should have to reiterate such complaints. 
 Alas ! that so much of the description 
 before us (especially the latter part of 
 it,) should be so applicable to our own 
 times. Yet let us not despond. The 
 perusal of a series of faithful sermons 
 preached on Fast-days and other public 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 occasions thirty or forty years ago, has 
 left a cheering impression on my mind. 
 Evils have been checked against which 
 the servants of God had then to cry out. 
 Good has been ascertained and confirm- 
 ed of w^hich they could then speak but 
 doubtfully. Institutions exist, and flou- 
 rish, and fill the earth with their fruits, 
 of which it scarcely entered into their 
 hearts to conceive. Let us therefore 
 *' thank God, and take courage." Let 
 us be *' stedfast, unmoveable, always 
 abounding in the work of the Lord, 
 knowing that our labour is not in vain 
 
 in the Lord'' 
 
 J.S. 
 
 Hull, December 12, 1831. 
 
AN ACCOUNT, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 The work which I propose in part to 
 repubhsh treats, first, of preparations against 
 the Pestilence — for warding it off; and, 
 secondly, of preparations for the Pestilence 
 — for meeting the visitation in a proper 
 manner, should it please God, after all our 
 precautions, to send it upon us. The 
 former are divided into Public, or measures 
 to be adopted by the government and 
 police ; and Domestic, or such as pertain 
 to individuals and families. Respecting the 
 Public Measures we shall only remark, that 
 the author discusses at some length what 
 he denominates " the French method," 
 of surrounding infected towns with troops, 
 
 B 
 
shutting up sick and well together in them, 
 and endeavouring to preclude the escape 
 of any persons from them, lest they should 
 carry the infection to other parts. This he 
 pronounces inhuman in the extreme,^ and 
 at the same time maintains that it has 
 seldom or never been found effectual. He 
 would rather, under proper tests and pre- 
 cautions, endeavour to withdraw the sound 
 part of the inhabitants, and leave behind 
 only the sick, with proper attendants, and 
 such as chose to remain and run all hazards. 
 Of the good effects of such a proceeding, 
 as far as it was carried, he contends that 
 London itself afforded an example at the 
 time of the great plague. Within the bills 
 of mortality indeed 68,596 persons died 
 
 * He subsequently mentions two children, thirteen and 
 fourteen years of age, being deliberately shot to death, con- 
 trary to the entreaties of the very people among whom they 
 had gone, because " in mere duty to their distressed father, 
 who lay sick in the mountains, they had found means to pass 
 the lines of Dauphin^ in the night, to carry him relief." Also 
 five soldiers, who had the guard of the lines, in like manner 
 shot " for having pursued two sheep within the lines, to kill 
 them, lest they should get back and infect the country." 
 
3 
 
 of the plague in the year 1665 ; but this was 
 out of a customary population estimated at 
 600,000 : whereas in Marseilles, about the 
 time he wrote, nearly the same number had 
 died out of 90,000 ! ^ And here he intro- 
 duces the following description of the state 
 of London at the time referred to. " The 
 removing of the inhabitants was at that 
 time very great, if we may believe the re- 
 port of those who were then living ; for, 
 first, the whole court removed to Oxford : 
 there was neither parliament nor term held 
 
 * It is afterwards observed that, though the number of 
 persons that died is accounted to the whole year, from 20 
 December, 1664, to 20 December, 1665, yet the great mass 
 died within less than four months, 81,f)59 being reported as 
 having died of all diseases from 18 July to 14 November : 
 and in the three weeks from 29 August to 19 September. 
 24,239. Moreover the bills of mortality neither did nor 
 could, as circumstances then were, give account of all who 
 died. " Numbers perished in the fields and high-ways, wander- 
 ing in their distress and desperation from the town, destitute, 
 and not knowing whither to go, and the villages about refusing 
 to admit them, or give them any shelter." " Thousands also 
 perished in those towns adjacent to London, which are not 
 included in the bills of mortality." W^hence the whole num- 
 ber is spoken of, in round and probably not much overrated 
 terms, as amounting to 100,000. 
 
 B 2 
 
in London ; so that all the nobility, and 
 gentry, and lawyers vanished as it were at 
 once, and there was scarce a living creature 
 to be seen about the court. Whitehall was 
 uninhabited, and the park shut up ; the 
 passages every w^here stopped. Nothing 
 w^as to be seen at the great houses of the 
 nobihty in Westminster and parts adjacent, 
 but a servant or two to look after the 
 house ; or perhaps nobody within, only a 
 watchman or two at the gate night and day 
 to prevent robbing the house. And, as the 
 plague began in the parish of St. Giles in 
 the Fields, the people at that end of the town 
 fled first ; so that the streets looked desolate, 
 and the grass grew at the doors and upon 
 the steps of the houses ; and the streets 
 were in several places barricaded at both 
 ends, the inhabitants being entirely removed 
 and gone. In the city, that is to say within 
 the walls, as I have been told, above seven 
 thousand houses were quite empty, and the 
 doors locked up ; and in most of the rest 
 the families were thin, half or more of them 
 
5 
 
 gone. And this was, without doubt, the 
 reason why the number that died in the 
 city was much smaller in proportion than 
 in any other part, there dying more by 
 4551 in the two parishes of Stepney and 
 White-chapel than in the whole ninety- 
 seven parishes within the walls. For in 
 these the people, being generally wealthy, 
 provided for themselves and their families 
 by an early flight into the country ; whereas 
 in the out-parts, the people living thicker 
 and closer together, and being poor and 
 wanting conveniences, and not able to flee 
 for want of friends or money, or both, died 
 in heaps, and strengthened the contagion 
 by their numbers." 
 
 What an affecting and even a^vful picture 
 is this ! Well might it be said, " How 
 doth the city sit solitary that was full of 
 people ! how is she become as a widow 1 " 
 (Lam. i. 1.) What thankfulness do we 
 owe to Almighty God, that we have never 
 witnessed such scenes : and that our coun- 
 try, though subsequently threatened, has 
 B 3 
 
6 
 
 not been revisited by them for the last one 
 hundred and sixty years. What sympathy 
 should we cherish for those who now suffer 
 under similar inflictions : and, while we 
 humbly confess our sinfulness and desert 
 of God's judgments, how should we im- 
 plore of Him " to turn away from us that 
 grievous calamity, against which our only 
 security is in His compassion." 
 
 Our author particularly urges, as a pre- 
 paratory measure, before the plague visits 
 or spreads in a place, the removal of all 
 the children and young persons, under 
 fourteen years of age, into country situa- 
 tions ; remarking that " the distress of 
 poor famiUes in the time of the last plague, 
 by reason of the great numbers of children 
 that lay starving upon their hands, was 
 inexpressible ; and the numbers of them 
 that perished in the streets, and in empty 
 houses, some by want, some by neglect, 
 some by the loss of their parents, and the 
 rest by the distemper, added exceedingly to 
 the height of the bills of mortality." 
 
Proceeding to Domestic Preparations, he 
 says, " The pestilence being a contagious 
 distemper, it is one of the first principles 
 that every family should abstain, as much 
 as possible, from conversing with others. 
 When a house is infected with the plague, 
 we shut it up. This was done in the late 
 plague of 1665 with great severity, none 
 being suffered to go in or come out. Here 
 the design is to keep the family from giving 
 the plague to the people. When a household 
 are sound and uninfected, they should shut 
 themselves up : to keep others from giving 
 the plague to them. — I know a family at 
 this time living in Marseilles, who, having 
 effectually locked themselves up within 
 their own house, and not conversed with 
 the people of the town, never had the 
 distemper at all." 
 
 " In order therefore to direct any par- 
 ticular family, who have substance to 
 enable them to shut themselves up in so 
 strict a manner as would be absolutely ne- 
 cessary," he proceeds " to describe a family 
 
8 
 
 so secluded," the account being, he says, 
 *' partly historical and partly for direction." 
 We must here however premise, that it 
 is not in order to second his recommenda- 
 tion of this or any other preservative against 
 the plague that the present account is 
 republished : but merely as an interesting 
 and affecting narrative, presenting the best 
 picture I have seen of the state of London 
 at that awful period. 
 
 *' The family I speak of," he says, 
 *' lived in the parish of St. Alban's, 
 Wood Street. They consisted of the master 
 of the family and his wife, being either 
 of them between forty and fifty years of 
 age, and in a pretty good state of health ; 
 of five children, three daughters and two 
 sons ; two maidservants, and an apprentice. 
 The person was a wholesale grocer, and a 
 considerable dealer. He had another ap- 
 prentice, nearly out of his time ; a porter 
 and a boy employed in his business : but, 
 seeing the desolation that was coming upon 
 the city, he dismissed the boy, and made 
 
9 
 
 him go away by the carrier to his friends 
 in Staffordshire. To his eldest apprentice 
 he gave the remainder of his time, and he 
 went away also. As to the porter, he did 
 not lodge in the house before : so there 
 was no occasion for dismissing him. But, 
 he being a poor man, and likely to fall 
 into distress for want of his employ, his 
 master engaged him to come every day 
 and sit at his door, in a lodge which he 
 made for him, from nine in the morning 
 till six at night, as a watchman, and to 
 receive any orders, go of necessary errands, 
 carry letters to and from the posthouse, 
 and the like. A wooden window^ covered 
 with plates of tin, was made, up two pair 
 of stairs, in which was fixed a pully with a 
 rope to let down or draw up any thing that 
 was wanted : and by this rope they often 
 let down victuals and cordials, and what 
 else they thought fit, to the poor man, the 
 porter ; and especially his wages constantly 
 every week, or oftener, as he wanted them. 
 But, whenever this window was to be 
 
10 
 
 opened, a flash of gunpowder was made near 
 it, and nothing suffered to come in from 
 abroad till it was sufficiently fumigated and 
 purified." 
 
 Such was the contrivance made for the 
 only intercourse which was to be held with 
 the world without, after the proper time for 
 shutting up the family should have come. 
 But our author enters largely into the par- 
 ticulars of the large store of provisions 
 which the hero of his narrative thought it 
 necessary previously to lay in, and which 
 the nature of his business and his accom- 
 modations enabled him to procure and stow 
 without too much attracting observation. 
 He then proceeds as follows : 
 
 " With these preparations he began. He 
 forbore shutting himself quite in for several 
 months after the plague was begun, and 
 even till there died above a thousand a 
 week ; because, though the infection was 
 very terrible in the out-parishes, and espe- 
 cially in the west part of the town, that 
 is to say in Holborn, St. Giles's, Fleet- 
 
11 
 
 street, and the Strand, yet the city was 
 very healthy : nor was the distemper felt 
 within the walls, to any degree, till the 
 latter end of June or the heginning of July : 
 for in the second week of July, when there 
 died, as hy the weekly bills appeared, 1268 
 of all distempers, there yet died but 28 of 
 the plague, in all the ninety-seven parishes 
 within the walls, and hut 16 in the whole 
 body of buildings on the Surry side of the 
 water. However the next w^eek after it was 
 doubled again ; and, as he foresaw the in- 
 fection overspreading the whole city and all 
 the out-parts, like a dreadful torrent, as he 
 had always said it would do, he began to 
 put his resolutions more strictly in execu- 
 tion : for from the beginning of July he 
 suffered none of his family to stir out with- 
 out the walls of the city, nor in the city to 
 any public place, market, exchange, church, 
 or the like ; and wrote to all his dealers 
 and correspondents in the country not to 
 write for any more goods, for that he could 
 not send any thing out into the streets to 
 
12 
 
 the carriers, or receive any thing in from 
 them. 
 
 ' ' The first of July he hegan to place his 
 porter without the door. By the fourteenth 
 of July the plague was increased in a 
 dreadful manner in the out-parts, so that 
 the bills amounted in that week to 1762 of 
 all distempers, 1500 of which might be 
 supposed to die of the plague, and the 
 number still increasing ; their own parish 
 being the second that was infected in the 
 city. 
 
 ^' Till this time he had taken fresh meat 
 of a country woman, a higgler, who assur- 
 ing him she brought it from Waltham- 
 Abbey market, and opened it not till she 
 came to his door, he had some satisfaction 
 in it : but now he forbade her also, and 
 allowed her coming no more. Now there- 
 fore he opened his magazine, and distributed 
 bread or biscuit by weight to his family. 
 
 *' Being thus entirely shut up, they 
 scarcely knew how it fared with their 
 neighbours ; except that they heard the 
 
13 
 
 knells continually sounding, and their por- 
 ter gave them in weekly the bills of mortal- 
 ity, from which they might see what 
 dreadful havoc the infection made in the 
 town around them. 
 
 " After they had been shut up about 
 three weeks, the porter gave them an 
 account that the next house to them but 
 two was infected ; that three houses on the 
 other side of the w^ay were shut up ; and 
 that two servants out of another house on 
 the same side of the way with them, but on 
 the other side of their house, were sent away 
 to the Pesthouse, beyond Old Street. 
 
 ' ' It was a great satisfaction to them that 
 the people in the next house to them, on 
 one side, had all gone away into the country 
 at the beginning of the visitation, and had 
 left the house locked up ; all the wdndow^s 
 barred on the inside, and boarded up on the 
 outside ; and had given the charge of the 
 house to the constable and watch. The 
 next houses to them, on the other side, 
 were all inhabited, and all visited ; and at 
 
14 
 
 length all shut up ; and in one or more of 
 them the whole families perished. 
 
 ' ' By this time they heard a bell go ring- 
 ing nightly along the streets, but knew not 
 what it meant, it not being the sound of the 
 ordinary bell-man : and, though they heard 
 a voice w^ith the bell, yet, as it did not go 
 at first past their door, they could not dis- 
 tinguish what was said : and, since their 
 porter did not sit at their door in the night 
 as he did in the day, they could not in- 
 quire : but at length their porter informed 
 them, that the numbers of people who died 
 were so great in the out-parts, that it was 
 impossible to bury them in form, or to pro- 
 vide coffins for them, nobody daring to 
 come into the infected houses ; and that 
 therefore the Lord Mayor and Aldermen 
 had ordered carts to go about, with a 
 bell-man, to carry away the dead bodies : 
 that this had been done in the parishes 
 of Holborn, St. Sepulchre's, Cripplegate, 
 and other large parishes above a fort- 
 night ; and that they began now to come 
 
15 
 
 into the city, and in particular to the 
 parish of St. Olave, Silver Street, which 
 was very sickly ; and that the carts were 
 come thither the night before. This was 
 frightful enough, Silver Street being the 
 next parish to St. Alban's, only on the 
 other side of the way. And the distemper 
 raged violently in both ; so that during 
 that fortnight, which w^as the middle of 
 August, there died near fourscore in those 
 two small parishes ; and the number 
 was still increasing. The reason of this 
 might be partly the joining of both 
 these parishes to the Cripplegate side of 
 the wall, and that the parish of Cripple- 
 gate was at that time dreadfully visited — 
 the plague having come down that wav 
 from St. Giles's. The weight of the in- 
 fection, during the latter end of August 
 and the beginning of September, lay chiefly 
 on that side the city ; from whence it went 
 on to Bishopgate, Shoreditch, White-cha- 
 pel, and so to Stepney, taking the city w^ith 
 it ; which was, as it were, carried down 
 
16 
 
 with the stream ; for the infection came 
 first into the city at Cripplegate, and so 
 spread in a few weeks quite over it. 
 
 ** At this time, namely from the beginning 
 to the end of August, or to the end of the 
 first w^eek in September, there died from 
 700 to 800, and almost 900 a week in 
 Cripplegate parish only : and then it was 
 that the carts were employed in that parish. 
 It was indeed impossible to bury so many in 
 the ordinary way ; for there died four thou- 
 sand people in five w^eeks in that parish : so 
 that neither could coffins be made, or 
 graves dug for them, or even churchyards 
 be found to lay them in. Hence they were 
 forced to obtain a grant of a piece of land 
 from the city in Finsbury Fields, adjoining 
 to the Artillery-ground, v;hich was given 
 them for a burying-ground ; and remains 
 such to this day. In this they dug vast 
 pits, and threw the bodies into them nightly 
 by cart-loads ; always covering those with 
 earth in the morning, who had been thrown 
 in over night ; and then next night throw- 
 
17 
 ing in more bodies and more earth ; and so 
 on till the pit was filled. It was reported 
 by the parish officers, that about 2,200 
 people were thrown into one of those pits. 
 " All this while the family continued in 
 health, and the cheerful parent encouraged 
 them to hope for preservation, whatever 
 might happen without doors. But, when 
 he received such bad news every day, and 
 every night heard the dismal bell with the 
 cart, and the voice following it in a mourn- 
 ful tone, ' Bring out your dead ! Bring 
 out your dead ! ' it could not but make 
 heavy impressions upon the minds of the 
 master and mistress of the family ; and 
 they began to look upon one another with 
 sad hearts, beheving they were all but dead 
 corpses ; and that the visitation was so 
 appointed by heaven, as that it would 
 sweep away the whole body of the inhabit- 
 ants, and that none would be left alive. In 
 this distress he prudently ordered all his 
 family to lodge on the lower floor, that is 
 to say, up one pair of stairs, and as many 
 
18 
 
 of them to lie single as possible ; and had 
 all the rooms above furnished with beds, to 
 lay any of the family in that should be taken 
 sick : so that if any fell sick they were to 
 be immediately removed into some of those 
 upper rooms, as to an infirmary, where they 
 should be separated entirely from the rest 
 of the family, and a nurse procured from 
 abroad, to tend them — who should be 
 drawn up by the pully to the wooden- 
 shutter, so as not to come through the 
 house at all, or converse with any in the 
 family. In ordering this he appointed, 
 that if he himself should be taken he would 
 go immediately into the infirmary, and be 
 attended by a nurse as above ; and that 
 none of his children should be suffered to 
 go up the stairs, or come near him ; and 
 that if he should die his body should be let 
 down by the pully also into the cart : and 
 so of the whole house : — though his wife 
 assured him, that if he was taken ill she 
 would go up into the infirmary, and be 
 shut up with him. 
 
19 
 
 " We must suppose this gentleman to have 
 much more prudence than religion, and 
 much more thought for his hody than for 
 his soul, and so of the rest of his family, 
 if he took no care all this while of his 
 house, as to their worshipping God. Be 
 pleased therefore ^to suppose, that, as he 
 was a serious pious good man, so he care- 
 fully maintained the worshipping of God 
 in his house ; that three times every day 
 he called his family together in the most 
 solemn manner to read to them, and pray 
 to God with them ; always committing 
 them with the utmost affection and humil- 
 ity to the divine protection, and casting 
 himself and them into the arms of God's 
 infinite mercy. Tw^ice every week they 
 kept a solemn day, giving themselves up to 
 God hy fasting and prayer. Every night 
 indeed, looking on themselves as dead per- 
 sons, they lay down with dismal appre- 
 hensions ; but were still comforted with 
 finding themselves, morning after morning, 
 preserved and in health. 
 
20 
 
 *' The careful father was up every day the 
 first in the house, and went to every cham- 
 ber door, servants' as well as children's, to 
 ask them how they did ; and when they 
 answered. Very well, he left them with that 
 short return. Give God thanks. This he 
 did, that if any had been ill they might 
 immediately have been removed up stairs, 
 as is mentioned above. 
 
 "" In the height of the calamity, and when 
 (as before,) the good man was almost dis- 
 couraged, he was still more straitened by 
 the loss of his poor faithful porter. He 
 missed him at the usual time when he was 
 wont to lower down by the pully a mess 
 of broth to him, or some other thing warm 
 for his breakfast. CaUing to him he re- 
 ceived no answer : which made him afraid 
 something was amiss with him. However 
 he heard nothing of him all that day or the 
 next ; when the third day, calling again 
 from within the door for him, he was 
 answered by a strange voice, which told 
 him in a melancholy tone that Abraham 
 
21 
 
 the porter was dead. ' And who then are 
 you ? ' said the master, to the person that 
 spoke, ' I am his poor distressed widow, 
 Sir,' said the answerer, ' come to tell you 
 that your poor servant is gone.' — He was 
 greatly afflicted at the loss of so useful and 
 so faithful a person. However he com- 
 posed himself, and said to her, ' Alas! poor 
 woman, and what canst thou do then? 
 ' Oh ! Sir,' said she, * I am provided for : I 
 have the distemper upon me: I shall not 
 be long after him.' He was perfectly asto- 
 nished and surprised at her last words, and, 
 as he said, they made his heart cold within 
 him. However, as he stood surrounded 
 with the smoke of gunpowder, and within 
 the wooden shutter, he did not immedi- 
 ately retire ; but said to her again : ' If 
 you are in such a condition, good woman, 
 why did you come out?' ' I came,' said 
 she, * Sir, because 1 knew you would want 
 poor Abraham to wait at your door, and I 
 would let you know.' ' Well but,' said 
 he, ' if he is dead I must want him ; you 
 
22 
 
 cannot help me, that are in such a condi- 
 tion as you speak of.' ' No, Sir,' said 
 she, ' I cannot help you ; but I have 
 brought you an honest poor man here, that 
 will serve you as faithfully as poor Abraham 
 did.' ' That is kindly done,' said the 
 master : ' but how do I know what he is ? 
 and, as he comes with you that are sick, 
 how do I know that he is not infected ? 
 I shall not dare to touch any thing that 
 comes from him.' ' Oh ! Sir,' said she, ' he 
 is one of the safe men ; for he has had the 
 distemper, and is recovered : so he is out 
 of danger, or else I would not have brought 
 him to you : he will be very honest.' This 
 was an encouragement to him, and he was 
 very glad of the new man : but would not 
 believe the story of his being recovered, 
 till he brought the constable of the parish 
 where he lived, and another person, to 
 vouch for it.-r-While this was doing the 
 poor woman, after some further questions, 
 and some money thrown down to her for 
 her relief, went away. 
 
23 
 
 " It was observable now, that, whereas 
 they had found it, as is said above, very 
 melancholy at first to hear so many knells 
 going continually, so on a sudden they 
 now observed that there was not one knell 
 to be heard. The reason, as the new 
 porter told them, was, that the number 
 of those who died was so great, that they 
 had forbidden the bells ringing for any 
 one ; and people were all fetched away by 
 the carts, rich as v/ell as poor. 
 
 " Many thousands of people would now 
 have fled away if they could, but nobody 
 would let them pass ; and the enclosed 
 family began to be in great terror, for the 
 houses were desolated round about them. 
 The numbers of people that died were 
 scarcely to be reckoned up : the bills gave an 
 account of nearly 1500 a-week within the 
 walls, notwithstanding the vast number of 
 people that were gone away ii^to the coun- 
 try : so that it was the master's opinion 
 that there would not one soul remain in 
 the whole city, but that all would perish. 
 
24 
 
 However he concealed his fears as well as 
 he was able ; and continued as well his 
 care over his family, as his earnest prayers 
 to God every day, and as I may say every 
 hour, for them. 
 
 " In the midst of this misery, and as he 
 began to be very well pleased and much 
 assisted by his new porter, and particularly 
 in that he was one that, having had the dis- 
 temper, was, as he concluded, in no danger 
 of having it again ; he was surprised with a 
 fresh affliction : for, calling one morning to 
 his new porter, nobody answered. He called 
 several times again, and all that day and 
 the next he heard nothing of him ; but 
 all the satisfaction he could get was from a 
 watchman, who stood at the door of a 
 house that was shut up — all which houses 
 had Lord, have mercy I and a great red cross 
 set on the door, and a watchman placed 
 without, to prevent any coming out or 
 going in. The watchman, hearing the 
 master of the house call the porter by his 
 name, answered, and told him the poor 
 
25 
 
 man that used to stand at the door was 
 sick of the plague, and he supposed was 
 dead. The master answered, ' I know 
 he was sick that I had first, and is dead ; 
 but this was another.' ' Well, Sir,' said 
 the watchman, ' but he may be sick and 
 dead too, I suppose, as well as the first.' 
 * No, no,' ■ said the master, ' you must 
 mistake : you mean the first.' ' No. Sir,' 
 replied the watchman, ' I knew your first 
 man, Abraham, was dead, but this man 
 was called Thomas Molins, was he not?' 
 ' Yes,' said the master : ' Then it is he I 
 mean. Sir,' answered the watchman. ' Why 
 that cannot be,' said the master, ' he had 
 been ill of the plague before, and was re« 
 covered ; and he cannot have it again.' 
 ' Alas! Sir,' said the ^^atchman, ' it is that 
 I suppose makes you so hard to understand 
 me. I know it is many people's opinion, 
 that when any have had the distemper 
 they are secure : but I assure you it is a 
 mistake ; for I have been twice recovered 
 of it in the Pesthouse, and been well a 
 c 
 
26 
 
 fortnight between the times, and now I 
 am abroad again : but I do not think my- 
 self safe at all by that ; for I know several 
 that have had it three or four times ; and 
 some that have recovered three or four 
 times have notwithstanding died of it 
 afterwards.' — ' And is my porter, Molins, 
 sick of it again ? ' said the master. * Yes, 
 Sir,' said the watchman, ' I heard he was ; 
 but I will acquaint you more particularly 
 to-morrow.' — Accordingly the next day, he 
 called to the watchman again, who told 
 him that he had enquired, and found that 
 poor Molins, the porter, was carried away 
 by the dead-carts, as they called them, the 
 night before. His master was surprised 
 exceedingly at this, and shut the wooden 
 door immediately without speaking a word 
 more : and going in sat him down, grieved 
 most heartily, and wept by himself a great 
 while, to think that two poor men had thus 
 lost their lives as it were to preserve him. 
 
 "After some time, he considered that there 
 was no room for him to be discouraged ; 
 
27 
 
 so, he went to his wife, and took a large 
 glass of Canary wine, which was his usual 
 cordial, and, putting as good a countenance 
 on it as he could, said nothing to his family 
 of the death of the poor man ; but resolved 
 to remain quietly in the condition he was 
 in : and, as it pleased God that all his 
 house continued in pretty good health, he 
 felt that he had great reason to be comfort- 
 ed and thankful for that ; and not to allow 
 any sorrows for others to affect his mind. 
 
 '' In this posture he remained about a 
 fortnight more, having no manner of cor- 
 respondence with the street ; and he had 
 resolved to have no more porters : so that 
 he was perfectly without intelligence, except 
 that still he found the watchman, he had 
 formerly talked with, every day before the 
 door of the house, as he thought, where 
 he was at hrst. But after about a fortnight 
 he grew impatient at being so entirely 
 without intelligence, and seeing none of the 
 weekly bills, and hearing nothing but the 
 doleful noise of the dead-cart, and the bell. 
 c 2 
 
28 
 
 At the end I say of the fortnight therefore 
 he opened his wooden window, and caUing 
 to the watchman, asked him how he did ; and 
 how that house was where he was placed ; 
 supposing it the same where he had been 
 before. ' Alas ! master,' said the poor 
 man, ' the distressed family are all dead and 
 gone, except the journey-man, and he is 
 carried to the Pesthouse, and I am placed 
 
 at Mr. 's, at the next door ; and they 
 
 have three people sick and one dead here. 
 He asked him then, in general, how it went 
 in the city ? He told him, very badly ; that 
 the last week's bill was above 8000 of all dis- 
 tempers ; that it decreased at the other end 
 of the town, in St. Giles's and in Holborn, 
 the people being most of them dead or 
 gone away ; but that it increased dreadfully 
 towards Aldgate and Stepney ; and also in 
 Southwark, where it had been more mode- 
 rate before than in any other part of the 
 town. ' In a word, this being the middle 
 of September, the plague was now in its 
 utmost fury and rage, only that, as above, 
 
29 
 
 it was abated in the west end of the town, 
 where it began ; and, as the poor man told 
 him, it had decreased a little in Cripple- 
 gate parish, though there still died there 
 between four and five hundred a week. In 
 the parish of Stepney, the deaths w^re above 
 eight hundred a week. 
 
 ** It was heavy news to this poor gentle- 
 man to hear to what a dreadful height the 
 calamity was come ; and yet it w^as some 
 encouragement that it began to go off 
 toward the east, and that it had decreased 
 so much in Cripplegate parish : and he 
 failed not to let his family know it. But 
 still, as the houses on both sides of him, 
 and almost the whole row on the side 
 opposite to him, were distempered, and some 
 whole families dead, it was very terrible to 
 them to think how they yet lived in the 
 midst of death. 
 
 " His family began now to be sorely 
 
 afflicted for want of fresh air : and, with 
 
 continued eating of salt meats, they began 
 
 to grow scorbutic and out of order. He did 
 
 c 3 
 
30 
 
 what he could, by desiring them to stir, 
 and be active and busy about the house, to 
 preserve health ; but would by no means 
 suffer any window or door to be opened : 
 but, as the weather began to be cooler than 
 it had been, he continued to keep fires in 
 every room on that floor where they lodged, 
 and had two of his family, who by turns 
 sat up half a night, and two more the other 
 half of the night, to keep the fires in, and 
 watch the house for fear of mischief. — 
 This scorbutic illness increased pretty 
 much upon them, till it was relieved at last 
 by the free use of lime and lemon juice, 
 which he had provided among his stores. 
 
 *' The streets were now a melancholy 
 sight to look into. The pavement was 
 overgrown with grass ; it was not one time 
 in twenty, that they looked through the 
 glass, (for they never opened any casement,) 
 that they could see any body going along, 
 or so much as a door open. As for the 
 shops they were all shut close, except that 
 the apothecaries' and chandlers' shops kept 
 
31 
 
 a door open for the letting people come for 
 what they wanted. Not a coach or a cart 
 was to be seen, except now and then a 
 coach carrying a sick body to the Pest- 
 house ; and every night, three or four times 
 a night, the dead-cart was heard, with the 
 bell-man crying, ' Bring out your dead.' 
 
 " The poor master of the house was now 
 so impatient for want of his porter, that he 
 could not content himself without opening 
 his wooden window two or three times, 
 to talk with the watchman, who conti- 
 nued posted at the door of the house that 
 was shut up ; and to inform himself how 
 things w^ent : but at last he looked for him 
 and found he was gone too, which was a 
 great loss to him : and he was the more 
 troubled, because he intended to have 
 given him some money. But one day, 
 as he was looking through the glass, he 
 spied the man standing on the other side 
 of the street, and looking up towards his 
 house. Upon this he ran immediately to 
 his wooden window, and opened it, though 
 
32 
 
 not forgetting to make the usual smoke 
 with gunpowder for his preservation. When 
 he had opened the window, the poor watch- 
 man told him he was glad to see him still 
 alive ; and that he had come twice before 
 in hopes to see him, but was afi-aid he had 
 not been well : that he came to tell him he 
 was dismissed from the house he had been 
 set to watch, most of the poor people being 
 dead ; and that, if he pleased to accept 
 of it, he would sit at his door in the day- 
 time, as his two porters had done. He 
 was glad of the offer, and engaged him to 
 take his post at the door. 
 
 ** The man had not been at the door 
 many days, when he called to his master, 
 and told him he was glad to give him the 
 good news that the infection abated, and 
 that the weekly bill was now decreased 
 1837 in one week — which had of a sudden 
 excited a great deal of joy among the 
 people. This was about the last week in 
 September. The next week the bill de- 
 creased again between six and seven hun- 
 
33 
 
 dred : though the whole number was still 
 5725. The burials in Cripplegate however 
 amounted only to 196. — which was but a 
 very few compared to 886 a- week, which 
 had died there a few weeks before. So that 
 the plague was as much ceased to them, as it 
 would have been to the whole city if there 
 had not died above 1000 or 1200 per week. 
 
 " His sons would fain have had him 
 now, like Noah, send out a dove, that is, 
 let them go out of doors to see how things 
 were, and how the city looked ; and they 
 urged him the more, because they began to 
 hear a noise of people in the streets passing 
 to and fro, and that pretty often : but he 
 kept his guard, and would not let any one 
 stir out, on any terms or on any pretence 
 whatsoever. 
 
 " The next week but two, which was 
 the third in October, there was another 
 great decrease of 1849 in one bill: and 
 now his porter knocked at the door, and 
 desired to speak with his master, to tell 
 him some good news. The master of the 
 c 5 
 
34 
 
 family soon appeared at his usual wooden 
 window, with one of his sons and one of 
 his daughters. The watchman told him, that 
 now he hoped he could assure him that the 
 visitation was really going oif ; that there 
 had died 1849 less last week than the week 
 before ; and that the Lord Mayor had or- 
 dered the carts to cease going about, except 
 twice a- week in several parts of the city, 
 and in others but once each night ; and 
 that there had died but 88 in Cripplegate 
 parish that week of all diseases : that indeed 
 the distemper continued very high in Step- 
 ney, and especially in Southwark ; but that 
 in the city it was extremely abated. He 
 let down to the poor man, for his good 
 news, a pint-bottle of good sack, and a 
 small basket with provisions for him and 
 his family. Henceforward they turned their 
 two days of fasting, which they had con- 
 stantly kept in the family every week, into 
 one day of fasting and one day of thanks- 
 giving. 
 • "But now on the sudden, to the great 
 
35 
 
 surprise of the whole family, the master 
 himself, who was the life and spring of all 
 the rest, and of all the management which, 
 under God, had so evidently preserved 
 them, was taken very sick. — It is not for 
 me, at this distance, to describe the ter- 
 rible consternation they w^ere all in. Not 
 only the whole family concluded he was 
 struck with the plague, but he himself from 
 the apprehension that he should be the 
 means of giving it to his children, would 
 insist upon their having him carried out to 
 the Pesthouse. His wife and all the chil- 
 dren declared against it, and protested to 
 him, every one of them, that they would 
 rather have the distemper with him, and 
 leave the event to God's mercy. By these 
 importunities he was prevailed upon : but 
 he ordered a bed to be made immediately 
 in one of the upper rooms, mentioned 
 before, and went presently to bed, taking 
 such things as were prescribed publicly 
 by the College of Physicians, to be given 
 on any one's being first seized with the 
 
36 
 
 plague — which were designed to provoke 
 perspiration. Upon taking these things he 
 fell into a profuse perspiration, and continued 
 so all night. Any one may suppose the 
 family had but Uttle sleep that night, being 
 in the utmost concern for so careful and 
 so kind a father ; as also so very anxious 
 to know whether he had the distemper or 
 not. — No more can I represent in a lively 
 manner enough the joy there was in the 
 house, when the next day they found their 
 father, who had fallen into a good sleep, 
 was so much refreshed, and so well, as to 
 satisfy them all that his disorder was not at 
 all infectious ; but that it rather proceeded 
 from the great weight and pressure of his 
 cares, which had been too heavy for his 
 spirits, and withal from having taken some 
 cold, as they thought, by standing too 
 long talking at the wooden window to his 
 watchman. In two or three days, he was 
 about the house again, and tolerably well. 
 
 " While the master of the house lay thus, 
 the family had no joy of the decrease of the 
 
37 
 
 plague ; for what was the decrease to them, 
 if it broke out now in their own house ? 
 But, as soon as he recovered a Uttle, then 
 they began to look abroad again for intelh- 
 gence. And now they could see through 
 their windows a new countenance of thinsrs 
 in the streets, and upon the houses ; that 
 the people began to go up and down the 
 streets very frequently ; and some began to 
 open their shops, at least to open them half 
 way. The hackney coaches also w^ere 
 heard rumbhng in the streets : so that, 
 without calhng to the porter, they could 
 easily perceive that the distemper was greatly 
 decreased, and that the people who w^ere 
 left had more courage than before ; in a 
 word that the plague w^as going oif, at least 
 in the city, and chiefly on that side where 
 they lived. Their porter, or watchman, 
 confirmed it to them the next day, when the 
 weekly bill came about, which he brought 
 to them. The master contented himself 
 with hearing how it was, but would not let 
 the bill be taken in : nor would he yet abate 
 
38 
 
 one tittle of his strict guarding of his family 
 from conversing with the streets. It was 
 now the last week in October, and so 
 greatly was the plague decreased, that there 
 were but 22 buried of it in all Cripplegate 
 parish, and but 28 the week before : which 
 was almost as surprising as the great rise 
 of it at first : though even this week the 
 bills were high in Stepney parish and in 
 South wark. 
 
 "Now, though this was joyful news to 
 tliis as well as to other families, yet he 
 was as anxious about the danger of open- 
 ing his doors too soon, as he had been at 
 first of keeping them open too long. He 
 was aware that people would be rash in 
 their joy, and that, presuming on the health 
 of the city being re-established, they would 
 return to their houses, and bring out their 
 goods, on which others had died, and air 
 them, too soon, and so perhaps bring back 
 the infection. And it was just as he had 
 said : for about the middle of November 
 the bills on a sudden increased 400 at once, 
 
39 
 
 and rose from a thousand to fourteen hun- 
 dred. The city was in a terrible fright on 
 that occasion : but it pleased God that it 
 went off again, and, the weather coming in 
 cool the distemper abated again, and the 
 bills continued decreasing, till in the third 
 week of November they were once more 
 under a thousand of all distempers, whereof 
 only 652 were of the plague. 
 
 " It is true that, considering the number 
 of people who were dead, which was verv 
 near a hundred thousand of all diseases, 
 and the great number fled away, which, 
 according to the most moderate guess, was 
 at least three times as many ; considering 
 the numbers who had had the distemper 
 and were recoveied, who, though, as was 
 evident in the case of the second porter, 
 they were not entirely free from the danger 
 of its return, yet were not so very easily 
 infected as others : I say considering this, 
 the dying of 652 a-week now was as much 
 as the dying of 2000 a-week was at the 
 beginning of August. This made the house- 
 
40 
 
 holder continue his caution with the same 
 rigour as ever, and indeed with rather more, 
 for he remembered well what a consterna- 
 tion the people were every where in, when 
 the plague was so increased, that there died 
 from 800 to 1000 a week of all distempers ; 
 and even in the week I now speak of, which 
 was from the 14th to the 21st of November, 
 the bill stood at 905, whereof, as already- 
 stated, 652 were of the plague. 
 
 *' Besides, there died of the plague that 
 very week, in the city, above twice the num- 
 ber that died in the week from the 21st to 
 the 28th of July, when the bill was 1761 in 
 all: for then there died but 56 in all the 
 city within the walls, whereas now there 
 died 127 of the plague: so that the city 
 was not so healthy then as the out-parts. 
 
 *' All these things he calculated exactly; 
 and, as he said, was very loth to lose all the 
 fruit of his care and caution, and of the 
 close confinement he had submitted to, by 
 a rash and needless adventure. His reasons 
 were so good, and their own safety so much 
 
41 
 
 concerned, that his family submitted to the 
 restraint with the more cheerfulness, though 
 they began to labour hard for breath at that 
 time, and to be very desirous of air, having 
 been shut up so closely and so long a time. 
 ''At length, on the first of December, 
 he opened his street door for the first time, 
 and walked out. The bill of mortality the 
 week before was 544 of all diseases, whereof 
 only 333 were of the plague, and nearly half 
 of that number were in Stepney parish, 
 and on the Southwark side of the river, 
 where the sickness continued latest, as it 
 had been longest before it began. The 
 first of Deceaiber, I say, he walked out ; 
 but he suffered none of his family to 
 stir but himself. He viewed the streets, the 
 houses and shops, but conversed with no 
 one ; nor did he see any body that he knew, 
 except a few just in his own neighbour- 
 hood. A vast number of houses were 
 standing empty and deserted, the inhabit- 
 ants being gone into the country : yet in 
 some of these he observed servants return- 
 
42 
 
 ed, who had opened the windows and doors, 
 and were, as we call it, airing the houses 
 and the goods ; making fires in all the 
 rooms, opening the windows, and burning 
 perfumes ; and in that manner preparing the 
 houses for the return of the families that 
 belonged to them. The number of people 
 in the streets was greater indeed than he 
 had expected : but this seemed to be occa- 
 sioned rather by the curiosity of the people 
 which were left, which led them to go more 
 abroad than otherwise they would have 
 done : for in the back streets, and ways 
 less frequented, he found very few. 
 
 '' He came home again in a few hours, 
 not having visited any body, or made any 
 enquiries after any of his friends, or any 
 one else ; and resolved to keep up his close 
 quarters one week longer. Nor would he 
 buy any fresh provisions, or suffer any one 
 to go to market ; but resolved upon some 
 new measures which he put in practice the 
 week following. At that time he went out 
 early in the morning, and taking his eldest 
 
43 
 
 son and his apprentice with him, walked 
 on foot as far as Tottenham High-Cross. 
 Finding there a house of one of his acquaint- 
 ance, which had not been infected at all, 
 he took lodgings or apartments in it for his 
 whole family, and the same day returned to 
 London. In the course of the w^eek he 
 removed them all thither, carrying his own 
 goods and some part of his provisions ; all 
 which he caused to be fetched by waggons 
 belonging to the country people, and such 
 as he had good information were sound, 
 and had not been infected at all. 
 
 *' Here he not only reheved his family 
 with fresh air, which they so much wanted, 
 but with fresh provisions also, which he 
 had now brought to them from Waltham 
 market, by his old higgler who had supplied 
 the family at the beginning of the year. 
 
 " He left his house in London fast locked 
 up, except the gate into his yard, the key 
 of which he gave to the honest watchman, 
 and went himself, or his son, or his appren- 
 tice, two or three times a week, to see that 
 
44 
 
 every thing was safe and in good order. 
 And thus he continued till the February 
 following : for all the month of December 
 and January the plague continued in the 
 city ; and at the latter end of December it 
 began to increase again ; which was believed 
 to be occasioned by the people's returning 
 faster than ordinary to their dwellings : so 
 that the third week in December, the increase 
 was 83 ; and then there died of the plague 
 still 281, the whole bill being 525.— But 
 by the beginning of February, the family 
 being well recovered and refreshed, and all 
 in perfect health, and the city being filled 
 again with people, and in a pretty good state 
 of health, he removed all back again, and 
 came to his house, opened his doors, and 
 carried on his business as before. 
 
 '' Thus, next to the protection of 
 God's Providence, a complete retirement 
 from the street, and from conversing on 
 any account whatever with the rest of the 
 people ; separating from them, and having, 
 as we may say, nothing to do with them, 
 
45 
 
 neither to buy, or sell, or speak, or sit 
 with them or near them, was proved to be 
 capable of effectually preserving a man or a 
 family, in the time of the direst infection. 
 
 ** I will not suppose this man or his 
 family, who were so severe in fasting and- 
 humbling themselves before God all the 
 time they were under apprehensions of the 
 distemper, and surrounded with daily expe- 
 rience of the dreadful calamity that lay upon 
 the city, could so far forget themselves 
 now, as not to give God thanks in the 
 most solemn manner possible for their deli- 
 verance. That part I take for granted. 
 They could not be rational creatures, much 
 less Christians, and retain no sense of 
 such a signal preservation. I will there- 
 fore, I say, take that for granted, and sug- 
 gest that the master of the family with the 
 utmost seriousness of devotion performed 
 this part, and that he obliged all his family 
 to do the like. 
 
 " I am also to obser\'e that, whereas 
 this gentleman laid in a magazine of stores 
 
46 
 
 sufficient for his family for a whole year ; 
 and as he was not shut up ahove seven 
 months or thereabouts, he had a quantity 
 of various articles remaining : and these 
 you are to understand that he brought out 
 when the markets were open, and provi- 
 sions came in plenty again, and might be 
 procured without danger, and made a 
 thank-offering of them to the poor namely, 
 1500 lbs. of Biscuit 
 300 lbs. of Cheese 
 
 5 Hogsheads of Beer 
 
 5 Flitches of Bacon 
 
 2 Barrels and more of salted beef." 
 
 Thus with his piety towards God, he 
 combined, as was so befitting the occasion, 
 charity to the poor, numbers of whom 
 must needs be, at such a time, in circum- 
 stances of the greatest exigency and dis- 
 tress. 
 
CONVERSATIONS, 
 
 ETC. 
 
 We now come to preparations for the 
 Pestilence ; preparations of mind, such as 
 may fit us for meeting the visitation without 
 injur}% should God be pleased to send it 
 upon us ; and that, whether its issue to us 
 be life or death. " This," our author ob- 
 serves, *' is the hardest part of the work 
 by far ; but, of the two, of infinitely the 
 greater consequence ; in proportion as the 
 eternal state into which we are all to pass 
 from this life is more important than the 
 present state. — Life and time," he proceeds, 
 ' ' are indeed of an inestimable value ; but 
 they are so only or principally, as on the 
 happy conclusion of them depends the 
 
48 
 
 eternal welfare of the person to whom they 
 are so valuable. The preparations for an 
 eternal state are only to be made in time, 
 which once slipped away, lost and unapplied, 
 is irrecoverably lost for ever. 
 
 *' The approaches of death are oftentimes 
 imperceptible, and the attacks sudden ; the 
 distempers by which we are carried away 
 are violent ; and it is a double terror to the 
 dying person to have the work of dying 
 and the work of repentance both upon his 
 hands together. O sinner ! remember that 
 the terrors of thy conscience will be a 
 weight too heavy to be borne at the same 
 time with the terrors of death : nay, the 
 terrors of conscience are those alone which 
 give terrors to death, and make the passage 
 out of life dreadful. ... It is enough to have 
 a violent fever drink up the moisture and life, 
 and not at the same time to have the arrows 
 of the Almighty drinking up the spirits. 
 Therefore that we may prepare in time for the 
 dreadful moments which are approaching ; 
 that when the call is heard no other noise 
 
49 
 
 may drown our comforts ; and that the busi- 
 ness of life may now without any delay 
 be to prepare for death : that such may be 
 the case, this tract is written. The appre- 
 hensions we are under at this time of 
 the approaching calamity, which afflicts 
 our neighbours,^ are a summons to this 
 preparation ; and that more forcible than 
 can be given from the mouth of man : and 
 many thousands will have reason to be 
 thankful for so long a warning, so timely 
 a summons — even all who listen to its 
 voice. The goodness of God is very con- 
 spicuous in this, that, as a pestilence, when 
 it comes, sweeps whole towns and cities 
 of people away, and death rages like an 
 ov^erflowing stream, so that there is then 
 little time given for repentance and calling 
 upon God ; so more time is usually given 
 beforehand for these purposes, and that 
 time accompanied with greater advantages, 
 from the impression which is made on the 
 minds of men. That solemn interval ought 
 
 1 The French. 
 D 
 
50 
 
 to be taken as the allotted time of pre- 
 paration, and to be improved accordingly. 
 Of this you shall now be more fully ad- 
 monished, in some discourses which took 
 place in a family in London just before the 
 last great plague. 
 
 '* The time before that dreadful visitation 
 was, as the present is, a time of apprehen- 
 sion and alarm ; though the warning was 
 not so long, or the danger so remote. The 
 distemper, according to that eminent phy- 
 sician Dr. Hodges, was brought to Holland 
 on board a ship, in some bales of goods 
 from the Levant. From Holland it came 
 over hither : how, or by whom, was never 
 particularly known, at least not publicly. 
 The first that died of it here, at least that 
 was put into the bills openly as dead of the 
 plague, was in the parish of St. Giles in 
 the Fields. It was reported that the whole 
 family died ; and I have some reason to 
 believe they did : but there was but one 
 entered in the weekly bill, and this was 
 about the 20th of December, 1664. 
 
*' This was heaven's first alarm to the 
 city of London. As it was a blow near the 
 heart, or in the capital itself, and not, as in 
 France, almost four hundred miles off, so 
 it more nearly touched the people, and their 
 apprehensions seemed to be in proportion 
 more serious and affecting. 
 
 "At this period, two brothers and a 
 sister, the children of one pious and serious 
 mother, a widow, lived together in one 
 house in the city. They were all grown to 
 years of discretion , the sister (the youngest) 
 being about nineteen, and one of the bro- 
 thers nearly forty ; the other about twenty- 
 six years of age. The sister was a most 
 religious and well-instructed young woman : 
 the brothers, men of business, engaged in 
 it and taken up much with it. They had 
 all been religiously educated, and were what 
 we call sober and orderly people ; but the 
 gentlemen, being engrossed in business, and 
 hurried in the world, getting money and 
 growing rich, had not made the concern of 
 eternal life the chief business of the present 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 life, as we all ought to do. They were 
 merchants, and had lived abroad ; but, 
 having returned to England, they had large 
 concerns, and transacted much business 
 both on the Royal Exchange and at the 
 water-side. As the eldest of the two bro- 
 thers was a widower, and had but two 
 children, who were very small, and the 
 youngest brother a bachelor, the young 
 lady, their sister, was their housekeeper, and 
 they called her familiarly their Governess. 
 And such she was indeed many ways ; being 
 not only the guide of their whole family, 
 which was large, but a faithful monitor to 
 themselves also as occasion presented ; 
 though not at first with all the success that 
 she could have wished. The old lady did 
 not live in the house with them, but, hav- 
 ing two or three younger children with her, 
 lived a little way out of town. She had also 
 two other sons, young gentlemen of about 
 nineteen and twenty years of age, who were 
 abroad in Spain or Italy, and placed in 
 very good business by the directions and on 
 
53 
 
 account of their brothers. The good mo- 
 ther of this family, having received early 
 impressions, as all the town indeed had, 
 that a hea^y and grievous judgment was 
 coming upon the city, and upon the whole 
 nation, began to have a heavy heart, and 
 to be deeply concerned on account of her 
 sons ; and, as she came frequently to 
 town, she failed not on every occasion to 
 be putting them in mind what a stroke, 
 as she said, was coming upon the nation, 
 and upon the city in particular ; and 
 to let them know what a dismal time it 
 would be with all those people especially, 
 whose eternal state was not secured, and 
 who had not the comfort of a safe passage 
 out of life in prospect. This she urged 
 upon her children every time she came to 
 see them ; and particularly would be repre- 
 senting to them how it was in London in 
 the time of the great plague, as it was then 
 called, which had been twenty-nine years 
 before, which, said she, I very well remem- 
 ber, having lived here all that time, and 
 D 3 
 
54 
 
 lost several relations and acquaintances who 
 died of the infection : and likewise in the 
 plague eleven years before that, in 1624, 
 when there died of all distempers above 
 54,000 people in London and the out- 
 parisheS) not reckoning the city of West- 
 minster, or the parishes of Stepney, Hackney, 
 IsUngton, Lambeth, Rotherhithe or Christ- 
 church, and Newington in Surry. 
 
 '' She talked so often of this, that her 
 
 eldest son used to tell her she was a little 
 
 too positive ; that it looked as if she would 
 
 be thought prophetic ; that the plague was 
 
 not actually broken out because one man 
 
 had died of it; that he believed it was 
 
 always in one part or other of the city a 
 
 little ; that the plague of 1636, which she 
 
 remembered, held 8 years ; and that every 
 
 year there died more or less, from 300 to 
 
 3000 ; that there was yet no pubhcation of 
 
 it, and I hope, madam, said he, there will 
 
 be none. He urged therefore that they 
 
 should not be always alarming one another 
 
 as if the evil was at the door ; that it was 
 
55 
 
 terrible enough when it came, but that to 
 be always in a fright about it, was to make 
 it a judgment while it was no judgment, 
 and the like : in a word, like her sister 
 preachers, Mary Magdalen and the other 
 women, her words seemed to them as idle 
 tales. (Luke xxiv. 1 1.) 
 
 " However, as a truly affectionate mother, 
 she continued her monitory discourses to 
 them. ' You, sons/ said she, ' are grown up, 
 and are above my admonition as a mother ; 
 but you cannot be out of the reach of exhor- 
 tation, and you ought not to take it amiss 
 that I press you to prepare for the dreadful 
 time of a visitation, in case it should come.' 
 * No, madam,' said the eldest son, ' none of 
 your children will take it amiss ; but w^e 
 think you make your company, which was 
 always pleasant to us, to be a little melan- 
 choly, for that you are always upon this 
 frightful su])ject. I doubt it is too much 
 upon your mind, and makes you heavy- 
 hearted when you might be cheerful.' Thus 
 their discourse began. 
 
56 
 
 ''Mother, I cannot lookback, child, 
 without horror of mind, upon the dreadful 
 time in the year 1625. I was but newly 
 married and settled in the world ; and we 
 were all full of mirth as you are now : and 
 on a sudden the distemper broke out, and 
 all our smiles were turned into lamentations 
 and tears. 
 
 Son. It came suddenly it may be, with- 
 out any warning. 
 
 M. No, no ; people had warning too : 
 but we that were young people then, just 
 as you are now, would take no notice 
 of it : we w^re marrying and giving in 
 marriage to the very day that it came upon 
 us ; and, when good people spoke to us of 
 repenting, and preparing to meet the Lord 
 in his day of wrath, and humbling ourselves 
 under his mighty hand ; we thought them, 
 just as you do now, too melancholy and 
 phlegmatic ; that they did not do well 
 to alarm the public, and put families and 
 cities into fright and disorder : and thus 
 we went on. 
 
57 
 
 >S. Well, madam, and yet, for all that, 
 it may be you thought as seriously of it 
 \yhen it came as they did. 
 
 M. Ay, son, but they that had thought 
 seriously of it so long before had a great 
 adyantage of us, and were so much before 
 us in their preparations. 
 
 ^. They had so much more indeed to 
 answer for if they were not better prepared. 
 
 M. I think, son, it should be rather 
 said, we had so much the more to answer 
 for if we were worse prepared. 
 
 S. But, madam, what can we do in the 
 case as it stands now ? eyery one ought to 
 prepare for death whether there be a plague 
 in the town or not : death comes in many 
 other shapes than that of a pestilence. 
 
 M. That is true, child, and I do not 
 speak against daily preparation for death : 
 God forbid that I should : but, when an 
 infection comes, child, death seems to come 
 with more terrors about him, cuts down 
 swifter, and we have less time to think of 
 what is to follow. 
 
 D 5 
 
58 
 
 S, Some reflect upon the severity of 
 the judgment, on that very score ; in that 
 people are swept away with a stroke, and 
 have scarce time to look up. 
 
 M. No, son, let none say so ; for I 
 affirm that God's mercies are so interspersed 
 with his judgments, that we have abundant 
 cause to acknowledge them, and ought to 
 keep our eye upon them in this particular, 
 namely, that God always gives people more 
 time to prepare for death in the case of a 
 plague than of an ordinary distemper. 
 
 S. How, madam ? That cannot be, for 
 in the plague people often die in twelve 
 hours after they are taken ; whereas in 
 fevers and other distempers they generally 
 lie as many days, or more. 
 
 M. x\y, son, but then you do not 
 consider that the plague generally ap- 
 proaches a country by slow degrees, and 
 you have many months' warning of it before 
 it comes : so that, if it swept all away in 
 a day, there is no room to call it sudden, 
 for every one had warning of it beforehand. 
 
69 
 
 S. But people do not look on the judg- 
 ment as particular, till it touches them 
 personally, or points to them in a family 
 capacity ; that is to say, till it has gotten 
 into the house. 
 
 M. That people do not take warning is 
 their folly and fault ; hut that God gives 
 them warning is their mercy, if they knew 
 how^ to make use of it. 
 
 S. Every body is willing to hope he 
 shall escape. 
 
 M. But every body ought to provide as 
 if he w^ere not to escape. Every soldier in 
 the army hopes to escape being killed, but 
 each soldier puts on his head-piece, that he 
 may fare the better if he is hit. 
 
 S. We should prepare, no doubt : but 
 to be apprehensive continually, as if we were 
 sure to have the distemper, is even to fright 
 ourselves into it. All physicians agree that 
 we should keep our minds easy and calm ; 
 that the passions of fear and anger prepare 
 the constitution to receive and nourish the 
 infection ; at least to dispirit and debilitate 
 
60 
 
 us, so that we are not duly fortified to resist 
 the enemy which we have to struggle with. 
 
 M. You greatly mistake the thing, child, 
 and mistake my meaning : I am of the same 
 mind, and say as the doctors do, though upon 
 other grounds. The mind should be kept 
 calm and unencumbered, that nature may be 
 assisted to repulse the enemy that attacks her: 
 but then I say, that nothing can animate and 
 encourage the mind like a firm resignation 
 to the will of God, and a comfortable hope 
 that it shall be well with us beyond the 
 present life. This is certainly the best 
 preparation for the distemper. 
 
 S. I do not deny that we shoidd be 
 always preparing for death ; but we should 
 not be discouraging ourselves before it 
 comes. 
 
 M. What do you call discouraging your- 
 selves ? Preparation is the only way to 
 avoid being discouraged. 
 
 S. You talk of preparation as if I was 
 sure it would come upon me. 
 
 M. As soon as we have reason to be 
 
61 
 
 satisfied that the distemper is begun, and is 
 come among us, I think every one, as far 
 as his preparations are concerned, should 
 look upon himself as if absolutely smitten, 
 as much as if he saw the tokens upon his 
 flesh. 
 
 S. And is not that all phlegmatic and 
 vapours, madam? Do not many, do you 
 think, in the plague as well as in other 
 distempers, fancy they have it, till they 
 really bring it ; and so have it because they 
 fancied they should have it ? 
 
 M. You forget what I said, son : I said 
 as to our preparations. 
 
 S. You distinguish nicely, madam ; 
 but others will take it another way. 
 
 M. I distinguish clearly, son, though 
 not so nicely as you represent. I say, 
 as to our preparations we should do 
 thus : that is to say, we ought to prepare 
 for death, as if we had the distemper just 
 now upon us. And my reason is good : 
 because I can assure you, when the body is 
 exhausted and tortured with that distemper, 
 
62 
 
 there will be as little capacity as there may- 
 be time, to look up to God, and to prepare 
 for death. 
 
 S. Why, madam, you would have us 
 all think ourselves dead men, or as if we 
 were under a sentence of death ; only re- 
 prieved a little while, and to be executed at 
 the pleasure of the judge. 
 
 M. Why truly our case is no other 
 than that in the whole ordinary course of 
 life. We are all appointed to die, and after 
 death to judgment ; (Heb. x. 27, 28 ;) only 
 for the present we have a merciful reprieve. 
 The comparison may be frightful, but it is 
 really not so remote from the act : and in 
 the present instance of the plague breaking 
 out in the city or town where we live, it is 
 much more to the purpose ; especially with 
 respect to persons whose business and cir- 
 cumstances call them to continue in the 
 city on such an occasion, as you say 
 your's do. 
 
 8. Well, madam, you have been in the 
 city during two plagues, that in 1625, and 
 
63 
 
 that in 1636, and you are still alive: why 
 may we not fare as well now, if it should 
 come ? ^ 
 
 M, The more I have of the mercy of 
 God to account for, child. But I cannot 
 say I was in the city all the while ; for the 
 last plague 1 was absent in Cheshire. But 
 in the first indeed I saw wonderful things 
 and terrible to relate : and this makes me 
 say that we should all look upon ourselves 
 as dead persons, or as reprieved criminals ; 
 and, giving up ourselves entirely into God's 
 hands, should stand ready expecting to 
 answer at the first call, and to say, Come, 
 Lord Jesus: for take my word, son, if it 
 comes, you will say it is a time to tremble 
 at ; a time to be prepared /or, not a time 
 to prepare in. 
 
 S. But, madam, it may please God to 
 avert the judgment ; he may be better to us 
 than our fears. 
 
 1 How obvious that the alternative to be prepared for is the 
 other — that of our nof so escaping. Our preparation (to say 
 the least,) will not hurt us, if we escape : but, if we do not, 
 what will be the effect of our iiPi^lect of preparation ? 
 
64 
 
 M, If it should be so, no man would 
 ever repent of his preparations, if they were 
 sincere, or say it was so much pains lost. 
 But flatter not yourself, son, with its not 
 coming : it is not coming, but come : have 
 you not seen it begun ? There are several 
 dead of it already, and more than you 
 think of. 
 
 S. One or two have died in St. Giles's 
 parish indeed, but that was last December : 
 and we are now in March, and there has 
 been but one more ; so that I hope it is 
 over. 
 
 M. That hoping it is over is a snare 
 of the devil: flatter not yourself with it. 
 When the plague begins, though there be 
 but one or two that die at first, you never 
 hear that it goes off" so : it always goes on, 
 though it begins slowly : and that slowness 
 of its beginning is what I call the merciful 
 warning given to us all of the approach of 
 the judgment. 
 
 S. So that, when one or two die, you 
 would have us take it the plague is begun ! 
 
65 
 
 M. Yes, I do insist upon it, and that 
 it always goes on. But further, let me tell 
 you, I know very well that, when our 
 weekly bills set down one or two to die of 
 the plague, you may depend upon there 
 being more ; for people are always diligent 
 to conceal their families being infected ; 
 because they would not have their shops 
 forsaken, their houses shut up, or themselves 
 be shunned as belonging to distempered 
 families : and therefore, in the last plague 
 of 1636, I remember there was so much 
 fraud used by the parish-clerks in forming 
 the weekly bills, that it was certain there 
 died 200 a- week of the plague, when by 
 the bills there were stated only 10, 12, 
 15, or thereabouts. 
 
 ^. So that you look upon the plague 
 as a thing already begun among us ? 
 
 M. Indeed, child, I do : and I believe 
 firmly that it is so at this time. 
 
 S. And what would you have us do ? 
 
 M. My answers, son, are short to that 
 question, whether you mean by us, us of 
 
66 
 
 this family, or of the nation : I would have 
 us return to God, lie at his feet, take the 
 words of scripture, and say. Thou hast 
 smitten, and thou ivilt bind us up. (Hos. 
 vi. 1.) In a word, I would have all pre- 
 pare themselves for death ; prepare together, 
 and prepare apart. 
 
 S. As much as if they were on their 
 deathbeds ! 
 
 M. Ay, indeed, the very same ; and be 
 thankful, humbly thankful for the time 
 allowed for it. Thankful that God hath in 
 mercy spared them an hour, with a reserve 
 of health and strength to turn to him 
 and repent : for, be assured, when the 
 visitation begins, there will be no room for 
 it : all will be filled with horror and deso- 
 lation ; every one mourning for himself; 
 no composure, no compassion, no affection ; 
 none to comfort, none to assist ; nothing 
 but death in all its most dismal shapes, and 
 in its most frightful appearances. 
 
 S. Why, madam, if your rule were to 
 be observed, there should be an immediate 
 
67 
 
 cessationof all business, from the king upon 
 the throne, to the school-boy, and to the 
 beggar in the street : all should fall on their 
 knees together like the people of Nineveh. 
 
 M. O that such a sight were to be seen ! 
 I am so fully persuaded that the plague that 
 is coming, and that I say is now begun 
 among us, is a messenger sent from God to 
 scourge us for our crying sins, that if the 
 voice of this nation were as universally sent 
 up to heaven as w^as that of the citizens of 
 Nineveh, and wdth the same sincerity of 
 humiliation ; I firmly believe that, as was 
 then the case, God w^ould repent him of his 
 fierce anger, that we should not perish. 
 
 S. But you w^ill not see that here, 
 madam. 
 
 M. No, child, I fear not ; and therefore 
 I am not talking of national humiliations, 
 but of family and personal humiliations and 
 repentance : and that, not on expectation 
 that God should withdraw the judgment 
 from the country wherein we live, but that 
 he may withhold his hand, and the hand 
 
68 
 
 of his destroying angel from our houses, 
 our families and our persons. 
 
 S.. Why, madam, you would put us all 
 into confusion : you would fright and ter- 
 rify us so, that we must shut up our shops, 
 embargo our ships, close our ports : the 
 customhouse would have no business, the 
 exchange no merchants, the merchandize no 
 market : we should be all frighted out of 
 our wits. 
 
 M. Ay, ay, I wish I could see people so 
 far out of their wits as that comes to : I 
 should then expect that some miracle of 
 deliverance would follow, as was the case 
 with Nineveh. But it is not to be expected 
 here. 
 
 S. No, indeed, madam, I believe not. 
 
 M. No, no, there is not a spirit of 
 national humiliation among us ; but I see 
 national sins rather come up to such a 
 height as they never were at in this nation 
 before : the dregs of the late wars ^ are not 
 purged out, and will not be purged out but 
 
 ^ The civil wars, 
 
69 
 
 by fire ; that is to say by the fire of God's 
 judgment, which is aheady begun among 
 us. 
 
 S. But they have been as bad formerly, 
 madam. 
 
 M. They may have been as bad for- 
 merly in the revelling days of king 
 
 but never worse than now ; and this even 
 under the pretence of greater reformation ! 
 all manner of wickedness and public debau- 
 chery being let loose among us, and break- 
 ing in upon us like a flood, encouraged even 
 bv those who ought to suppress it, and by 
 the example of those from whom we hoped 
 to find examples of good ; or at least to 
 have profaneness and immoralities pun- 
 ished and discouraged. 
 
 S. The world was always as wicked, I 
 think as it is now, madam, since I remem- 
 ber it. 
 
 M. But we hoped the late turn of 
 affairs should have given a blow to the 
 wickedness of the times : but I ihink it has 
 rather made them worse. 
 
70 
 
 S. That lies upon the great men, 
 madam, who should have reformed us, and 
 who should have shewn better examples to 
 the people. And you see they have ap- 
 pointed days of humiliation for us : what 
 can they do more ? 
 
 M. Well, and God may visit our ma- 
 gistrates as well as others : but certainly this 
 judgment will fall upon the people too ; for, 
 though the other are principal, the people 
 are guilty : and it is from them that God 
 expects a general repentance : and therefore 
 national humiliations are the duty of the 
 people on these occasions. 
 
 S. I see nothing in these public humi- 
 liations but formality, and making a kind 
 of holiday of it ; a day of idleness and 
 sloth. 
 
 M. As to that, I hope among serious 
 people it is otherwise ; but in the general 
 what you say is too true : and therefore, to 
 enter no further into a complaint of what 
 we cannot mend, one thing we can do ; 
 every one may reform for himself, and 
 
71 
 
 repent for himself; and this is what I 
 would fain see in our families, every one 
 mourning apart. (Zech. xii. 12 — 14.) 
 
 >S. But even that is not likely to be 
 seen in the manner you would have it. 
 
 M. No, son ; and therefore I am for 
 having all individually prepare for the 
 plague, by preparing for death ; as seriously 
 and with as much application as if they 
 were actually infected, and had the distemper 
 upon them. 
 
 S. Preparations for death, madam ! 
 What do you call preparations for death ? 
 — In the first place, if I am to prepare for 
 death, I mustvjnake my will. 
 
 M. Dear child, do not make a jest of 
 it. I am speaking with a heart full of grief, 
 upon an event which, when it comes, will 
 perhaps be as terrifying to you as to me. 
 
 S. Ay, and more so too, madam : I am 
 not jesting with it, I assure you. But I 
 would hope it may not come : it may please 
 God to prevent it : and therefore I cannot 
 think of such a solemn entering upon pre- 
 
7-2 
 parations for dying, as if it were this minute 
 upon me : for then as I said, I must make 
 my will, shut up my counting-house, stop 
 all my shipping of goods, pay off my ser- 
 vants, and send for the minister. 
 
 M. This I do really call jesting with 
 it, son. But, since you will speak of these 
 things, I must tell you that every man that 
 has any family affairs to settle ought to do 
 it forthwith ; for a time of the plague will 
 be no time for making of wills, and settling 
 estates, I assure you ; any more than it 
 will be for repentance. When ministers 
 will not be found to comfort the souls of 
 dying penitents, it may be still harder to 
 find scriveners to make their wills. When 
 husbands are abandoned of their wives, and 
 wives of their husbands, fathers of their 
 children, and children of their fathers and 
 mothers ; when all fly from one another for 
 fear of their own lives, there will be no 
 room for settling affairs, as you call it. 
 
 ^. Dear madam, it makes one's blood 
 run chill in the veins to hear you talk so. 
 
73 
 
 Come, pray let us talk of somewhat else : 
 this is enough to make one die with the 
 fear of it. 
 
 M. O child, it is much w^orse to die in 
 that condition itself, than to suffer from 
 the fear of it. I could tell you such 
 stories of the dreadful circumstances of 
 families and individuals, in the several 
 times of such judgments as these — cases 
 which have happened in my time, and 
 w^iich I have particularly heard — as would 
 indeed make your blood run chill in your 
 veins. 
 
 S. O madam, do not tell us such 
 dismal stories : you should rather encour- 
 age us. 
 
 M. I would say any thing to encourage 
 you to go about the preparation I speak 
 of; but I fear that is not the encouragement 
 you mean. 
 
 Daughter. No, madam, that is not the 
 encouragement my brother means. 
 
 M. What then, child? 
 
 D. My brother thinks you should 
 
 E 
 
' 74 
 
 rather encourage us to hope it will not 
 come, or that if it should come we may 
 escape it. 
 
 M. What can the end of such encour- 
 agement he ? 
 
 S. Why, that we should not be always 
 poring upon it, but might live as cheerfully 
 as we used to do. 
 
 D. My mother seems to intimate, that 
 to encourage us so can have no other effect 
 than to encourage us to continue unpre- 
 pared for the event. 
 
 S. I hope we are all prepared for it. 
 D. I can answer but for one : I dare 
 not say I am prepared, unless it be to die 
 at the very thoughts of it. 
 
 S. Ay, why that is the very thing I 
 say : my mother is enough to fright us all 
 to death. 
 
 M. Why, as my daughter said, what 
 can I do ? To encourage you, as you call 
 it, is to encourage you to put off all pre- 
 paration. Is it possible for me to do 
 that ? No : but I would encourage you to 
 
75 
 
 be prepared : that would be to destroy all 
 the reason of fear. 
 
 8, Why you see my sister says, 
 madam, she is ready to die at the thoughts 
 of it. 
 
 D. O but, brother, do not mistake me : 
 it is not at the thoughts of preparing, but 
 at the thoughts of my being found unpre- 
 pared. 
 
 M. There is a great deal of difference 
 in that, son. 
 
 B. There is a difference in the cause 
 of the fear ; but that frightening of people, 
 one way or another, is what I cannot think 
 ought to be. 
 
 M. I cannot think that to move people 
 to prepare themselves against the worst is 
 justly to be called frightening them. 
 
 8. It is alarming us. 
 
 M. Ay, but, son, it is not alarming us 
 when we ought not to be alarmed, or 
 frightening us without cause. 
 
 /S. Well, madam, I will not oppose 
 your cautions. I know you mean well ; 
 E 2 
 
76 
 but you will give us leave to hope that it 
 may not be so bad. 
 
 D. Dear brother, I do not find that my 
 mother insists on what will, or will not be ; 
 but, as the danger at least is real, she 
 moves us to be ready for the worst. 
 
 S. But my mother says the plague is 
 actually begun : I hope it is not. 
 
 D. Well, brother, I hope so too : but 
 I am afraid it is ; and from this hour, I 
 assure you, if God please to assist me, I 
 will prepare for it, as if it was not only 
 come and broken out in the city, but come 
 upon me, and I was actually infected with it. 
 
 S. And from this time forward I con- 
 clude you will have the plague. Your 
 frightening yourself so with it is enough 
 to bring it on. 
 
 M. Oh, that the whole nation were 
 so frightened into the same resolution ! 
 God assist you, my dear girl, and cause 
 you to go on comfortably in such a work. 
 
 >Si. You bring it to a more solemn con- 
 clusion than I intended it, madam. I wish 
 
77 
 
 every one may prepare for it, but I cannot 
 say I would have them frightened into their 
 preparations : that was all I meant, and 
 the reason is, because such public alarming 
 of the people has in it public mischief : it 
 does hurt to the nation in general, injures 
 trade, wounds the poor, sets other nations 
 upon their guard against us as if we were 
 already infected, sinks credit, and dis- 
 courages the people. 
 
 M. I have nothing to do with your 
 politics ; all your reasons of state are of no 
 weight here : it were better all those mis- 
 chiefs should follow, and the people were 
 prevailed upon to begin a general sincere 
 repentance, than that all those things should 
 be avoided, and the poor stupid people be 
 left to sleep on in security, till they sink 
 into destruction. 
 
 S. Well, madam, that is true too : but 
 these things may be done prudently, and 
 with respect to the public peace ; for all 
 such alarms, as disturb people's minds 
 with the fear of public calamities, tend 
 
 E 3 
 
78 
 
 to confusion, and to set us all in an 
 uproar. 
 
 M. To put an end to all the frivolous 
 pleadings about frightening and alarming 
 the people, 1 say that to persuade men to 
 preparation for death, because such a 
 judgment is likely to come upon them, is 
 not alarming or frightening them at all. 
 A serious persuading men to repent and 
 prepare is persuading them to put them- 
 selves into such a posture that they may 
 not be frightened, or surprized, or alarmed : 
 for to be prepared is to be past being fright- 
 ened, and to be in the only condition that 
 gives courage. You may as well say John 
 the Baptist frightened the people, when he 
 preached to them and cried, Repent, for 
 the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
 
 S. Then we must come, madam, to 
 enquire what you mean by preparations. 
 
 D. If I may speak before my mother, 
 I will tell you, brother, what I believe my 
 mother means ; or at least how I under- 
 stand it. 
 
79 
 
 M. I doubt not you both understand it, 
 and understand it alike. 
 
 -D. I understand by preparations for 
 death, repentance and a reformed life.^ 
 
 ^ Here we recognise the defective or erroneous language or 
 doctrine of the times in which the work before us was written. 
 The scriptures speak of two things, " repentance towards God, 
 and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ:" (Acts xx. 21:) 
 but here in fact only one thing is spoken of — for what is 
 " repentance " without " reformation of life ? " and of what 
 worth is mere outward "reformation of life," not springing 
 from an inward principle of " repentance towards God?" — 
 Moreover that part of the religion of a sinner which is here 
 omitted is the great one of all, on which every thing else de- 
 pends — which is therefore even allowed to stand alone for the 
 whole, in another chapter of the book of Acts, and in many 
 other places. " Sirs, what must I do to be saved ? And they 
 said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shaltbe saved." 
 fActs xvi. 30, 31.) Repentance is necessary, and reformation 
 of life is necessary ; as necessary as any man can represent 
 them to be : but a true and lively " faith towards our Lord 
 Jesus Christ," will eflfectually secure them; while they will 
 never exist in any genuine state without it. — Omitting or 
 throwing into shade faith in Christ, we thus treat that which is 
 the sole medium of our acceptance to the divine favour, and 
 the sole channel (so to speak,) through which we receive that 
 grace and strength without which we can "do nothing" 
 good : we run infinite risk of leading the sinner to a wrong 
 dependence on his own repentance and amendment : we 
 approach too nearly towards inverting the order of our truly 
 evangelical Confession; and reading it, "Have mercy upon 
 us, spare us, restore us, seeing that ue do now lead a sober, 
 
80 
 
 M, They are the general indeed, child: 
 there may be many particulars in them, 
 but I am no preacher : the rest will follow 
 of course. Repent and reform : those two 
 will contain all you can want or I desire. 
 
 righteous, and godly life;" instead of, *' Have mercy — par- 
 don — restore — and grant that we may hereafter (henceforward) 
 lead such a life, to the glory of thy holy name." — The Saviour, 
 in fact, is from the first to be held out to every sinner, who 
 feels any desire or need of salvation, as his " all in all :" con- 
 stituted by the Father to be the sole author of all his salvation. 
 "Him hath God the Father sealed:" He is " made of God 
 unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and 
 Redemption : " through his sacrifice and intercession, his 
 * ' obedience unto death " for us, and for the sake of this only, 
 we are to receive pardon, peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
 and every blessing : faith, or humble earnest dependence on 
 him alone, is the sole link which connects us with him, and 
 brings home to us all his blessings, " without money and with- 
 out price" — without all regard even to our repentance and 
 reformation, considered as any ground of dependence — a-s giving 
 us any title to favour; "it is 0/ faith that it might be 6y 
 grace." (Rom. iv. 16.) To this point then is the sinner to be 
 directed from the \ery first; hence all his hope and comfort 
 are to be derived : and from no other source is he to seek 
 them, even to the last. 
 
 I have been anxious to make these statements, the very first 
 time occasion was given for them, in order to supply a defect, 
 or correct an error, in our author's theology. But, this being 
 done, it is but justice to say, that we shall soon find his error 
 or his defect to be by no means so serious as from this first 
 
S. Nobody can object that we ought 
 not to repent and reform. 
 
 M. Well, child, I only press to the 
 present going about it, because the judg- 
 ments of God are at hand. And you 
 complain that this is frightening people : in 
 which I think you are mistaken. 
 
 S. No, madam, if you mean no other- 
 wise than that, I join with you with all my 
 heart. Certainly we should be persuaded 
 by all just and reasonable arguments to 
 repentance and reformation : I did not deny 
 that. I only said, I hope the plague may 
 not be so near as you fear it is. 
 
 opening we might have expected. This will appear when the 
 present suspicious language is qualified and corrected by all the 
 strong expressions which follow, of conscious sinfulness and 
 unworthiness ; of the renunciation of all self-confidence, and 
 dependence on any thing we do ; of the necessity of " casting 
 ourselves upon infinite mercy alone, through the merits of our 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; " and finally by the explicit 
 notice of " faith in Christ" as our only source of hope, and 
 the citation of those very texts of scripture which were adduced 
 near the opening of this note. With all these passages before 
 us, we should not be following a scriptural example were we 
 to " make a man an offender for a word," to the extent that 
 some would do. 
 
82 
 
 M. Well, son, we will not differ about 
 that : if it pleases God to spare us, and to 
 spare the land in which we live, I shall be 
 one of the first to rejoice and give thanks : 
 and, though I dare not say I expect it, T 
 shall not cease to pray for it ; still carrying 
 this along with me in all I have to say of it, 
 that to repent and reform our lives and 
 turn with all our hearts to the Lord, which 
 is what I mean by preparation, is the only 
 way to be unsurprized at it when it comes 
 upon us. A mind suitably prepared is a 
 mind fortified and made bold to meet the 
 worst ; prepared to give up itself into the 
 hands of a merciful Saviour. A heart pre- 
 pared is the heart the scripture speaks of, 
 when it says, He shall not be afraid of evil 
 tidings, ivhose heart is fixed, trusting in the 
 Lord. (Psalm cxii. 7.) 
 
 " Thus this conference between the 
 mother and the son ended for that time. — 
 It was now about the month of April, 
 1665, and there had died but one of the 
 plague since December ; and that was in 
 
83 
 
 the beginning of February : so that the 
 eldest brother used frequently to laugh at 
 his sister about the long dialogue they had 
 held with their mother on the subject of 
 the plague coming upon them, and its 
 being actually begim. And once or twice 
 he jested with her a little profanely, she 
 thought, about her preparations, as she 
 called them, for the plague. This grieved 
 the young lady, and made her shed tears 
 several times ; and once she took the free- 
 dom to say, ' Dear brother, you jest at my 
 preparations with too much reason, they 
 being but very weak and imperfect : I pray 
 God I may be able to prepare myself better 
 against such a dreadful time, if ever it 
 should come. But I beseech you, brother, 
 to take care that your own preparation be 
 not a jest indeed, when such a time comes : 
 and, if it should be so, how will you be 
 able to stand it ? for certainly nothing but 
 a mind well prepared can be able to bear 
 up. How shall our hearts endure, or our 
 hands be strong in such a day as that ? ' 
 
84 
 
 " It was in the very anguish of her mind 
 that she said this to her brother, and not 
 with any passion or displeasure at his ill 
 usage of her : but she did it with such 
 seriousness, such gravity, and so many 
 tears, that he was very much affected with 
 it ; asked her pardon ; told her he would 
 not jest with her any more upon that sub- 
 ject ; that he was satisfied she was much 
 better prepared than he was, and that she 
 was in the right ; that he would for the 
 future do all that lay in his power to en- 
 courage her preparations ; that, though he 
 had not received such impressions himself 
 from his mother's discourse as she had, yet 
 he was far from thinking her in the wrong; 
 and that, should such a time come as their 
 mother had talked of, he could not deny 
 that she was much better prepared to stand 
 it than he was ; but that his dependence 
 was, that God would spare them, and not 
 bring such a calamity upon them. 
 
 ' ' This healed that little wound his loose 
 way of talking had made, and his sister was 
 
85 
 
 pacified. She told him she was glad to 
 find him more serious on a subject so 
 weighty : that, as to the freedom he took 
 with her, that was nothing ; but that it 
 grieved her so, that she could not bear it, 
 to hear him speak slightingly of the most 
 dreadful judgments of God, that were at 
 that time abroad in the earth : that, as she 
 w^as entirely of her mother's opinion, that 
 it would not be long before the plague 
 broke out here, however he might cen- 
 sure and perhaps ridicule that thought as 
 melancholy and vapourish ; yet that, as 
 she was fully possessed with a belief of 
 it, it could not but very sorely afflict her, 
 for his sake, to think how light he made 
 of it : and that her satisfaction was now as 
 great, in proportion, to see him abate of 
 the levity with which he had talked of these 
 things. 
 
 " It was not above a fortnight after this 
 discourse, that the town had another alarm, 
 and her brother was the person that 
 brought her home the news of it : for, 
 
86 
 
 about the 20th of April, the report was 
 spread all over the town, that the plague 
 had broken out again in St. Giles's parish, 
 and that there was a whole family dead of it. 
 " The young lady was in her chamber 
 one morning, when her brother, having 
 been out about his affairs, came home in a 
 very great concern ; and, coming up to her 
 door, said, ' O sister, we are all undone,' 
 ' Undone ! ' said his sister ; ' what is the 
 matter ? ' He could not speak again for a 
 good while ; but, as his sister was frighted, 
 and pressed him again, repeating the words, 
 ' What is the matter ? ' at last he cried out 
 again, ' We are all undone, sister ! My 
 mother and you were both in the right, 
 the plague is begun ! ' He appeared in the 
 greatest consternation, and his sister had 
 much to do to keep him from swooning. 
 His heart, as he said afterwards, was sunk 
 within him ; his thoughts all in confusion ; 
 and the affairs both of body and soul lay 
 heavy upon him. — His sister received the 
 news he brought without any fright or 
 
87 
 surprise ; but, with a calm mind, stood 
 still a while, and as it were musing to bring 
 herself to a settled frame, while her brother 
 went on with his exclamations. At length, 
 lifting up her eyes and hands, she said. It is 
 the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good ! 
 and immediately she applied herself to 
 relieve her brother, and get something for 
 him to take to restore his spirits, com- 
 forting him with her words as well as her 
 actions. 
 
 " He was not so overwhelmed, but that 
 he could perceive the surprising manner 
 in which his sister, though so young, 
 received the news ; and how free she was 
 from any oppression or sinking of her 
 spirits : how it did not discompose her so 
 as to hinder her concern for him : and 
 when he came a little to himself he said 
 aloud, ' O sister ! you are happy, that took 
 the early counsel of our dear mother ! With 
 what a diiferent courage does a prepared 
 mind receive the impressions of the most 
 dreadful events, from one that, being care- 
 
88 
 
 less and negligent in these things, as I have 
 been, entertains the first thoughts about 
 them not till they are just upon him ! ' 
 
 ' Dear brother,' said she, ' do not talk so 
 of me : my preparations are poor empty 
 things : I have no preparations but these 
 few, an imperfect repentance, and a hum- 
 ble resolution to cast myself upon infinite 
 mercy : and T hope you have gone beyond 
 me in all these, for you have more know- 
 ledge, more years, more experience, and 
 more faith too, than I have, or else it is 
 but very weak.' 
 
 * You are happy, child, let the judg- 
 ment come when it will,' said her brother : 
 * but I have all my work to do. I have 
 had more years and more knowledge, you 
 say ; and I must add that I have more 
 work to do, more talents to account for, 
 more misspent time to answer for ; and T 
 have made no preparation for this surpris- 
 ing condition we are all likely to be in ; 
 you know I despised it all.' 
 
 '* She had besides this discourse enquired 
 
89 
 
 of him how things were, and how he un- 
 derstood that, as he said, the plague was 
 begun. He gave her an account that there 
 had been two men buried in St. Giles's in 
 the Fields : that it was true there were but 
 two put into the weekly bill, but that he 
 was assured there were two or three houses 
 infected, and that five people were dead in 
 one, and seven in another ; and that the 
 number of burials in St. Giles's parish, 
 which used to be about 16 or 18 at most, 
 was now increased to 30 ; which indicated 
 strongly that the increase was by the plague, 
 though they concealed it, and put them in 
 of other distempers. 
 
 *'This was a terrifying account, and he 
 was exceedingly affected with it himself, as 
 you see. As for the young lady his sister, 
 who had long used herself to the thoughts 
 of these things ; who expected it to be as it 
 happened ; and who, from her mother's 
 discourse, having for some months looked 
 upon the distemper as begun, had seriously 
 applied herself to the great work of prepa- 
 
90 
 
 ration for death, and was come to that 
 happy state of being entirely resigned to the 
 disposal of heaven ; this being her case, 
 she was far less surprised with it than her 
 brother, and stood, as it were, ready to 
 submit to the will of God. in whatever way 
 it should please him to deal with her. And 
 thus she abundantly made good the prin- 
 ciple her mother had urged, namely, that 
 to speak of the plague beforehand as in 
 view, and to make preparations for it as a 
 thing certain, was so far from being a need- 
 less alarm to the people, and frightening 
 and terrifying them, that it was the only 
 W'ay to preserve them from being frighted 
 and terrified at it, when it really came upon 
 them ; and was the only w^ay to keep the 
 public peace, as her brother called it, by 
 keeping the people composed and free from 
 the confusions and tumultuous hurries which 
 they are otherwise apt to fall into on such 
 occasions. 
 
 " But the scene was not as it were yet 
 spread, or the tragedy begun : there was 
 
91 
 
 another prelude to appear, even in the nar- 
 row compass of this one family. O may it 
 not be the case of many among us, upon 
 the present view of things of the like kind ! 
 — When the first disorders of this occasion 
 were a little abated, and this gentleman had 
 come a little more to himself, things took a 
 new turn with him. He was occupied in his 
 business during the day, and in company in 
 the evenings ; but in the morning he had 
 always a little conversation with his sister, 
 and she soon observed, after the first two 
 or three days, in which he continued much 
 affected with the danger they were all in, 
 and with his ow^n unprepared condition 
 also, as he owned it to be ; that he dropt 
 the discourse by little and little ; till at last 
 he said nothing at all of it to her for three 
 or four days. Upon this, one morning as 
 they were talking together, she broke in 
 upon him wdth it thus : ' Dear brother, 
 vou tell me no news now, nor how we 
 stand as to this terrible stroke that is com- 
 ing upon us. I cannot but be very much 
 
92 
 
 concerned to hear what condition we are 
 in. Pray how does it go on ? ' 
 
 ' God be praised,' said he, ' the distem- 
 per is stopped again : they say it was only 
 a violent fever that seized one or two 
 families : and the people have been in such 
 a fright about it by the rashness of some 
 old women, who set up a cry of the 
 plague, that it has put all the town in an 
 uproar. But it is stopped : and I saw from 
 the weekly bill to-day that the number of 
 burials in St. Giles's is decreased again, and 
 none of the plague or fever more than usual.' 
 
 S. I am glad to hear it, brother : I 
 wish it may hold. 
 
 B. I hope it will, sister. Come, do not 
 be like my mother. 
 
 S. I wish I could be like my mother. 
 
 B. Ay, but do not be like her in this ; 
 do not be always foreboding. 
 
 S. Dear brother, I forbode to nobody 
 but myself. I do not take upon me to teach 
 you, or say any thing but just what you 
 ask me. 
 
93 
 
 B. Well, but do not forbode to your- 
 self, sister : why, you will bring yourself to 
 mope, and be dull upon it, till you come 
 to have the vapours, and be half-mad. 
 
 /S. I hope not, brother. I do not think 
 so disconsolately upon it : I hope I am in 
 the hands of God, and it is my mercy that 
 I am so : I only want more strength to 
 bring my faith to an entire dependence 
 upon him. 
 
 B. But still you go on upon the old 
 story, that the distemper will certainly 
 come upon us. 
 
 S. Nay, I cannot but say I expect it 
 as certainly as if it were here just now : 
 that I cannot go from. 
 
 B. No, no, I hope not : come, God 
 may be better to us than our fears allow us 
 to suggest : it may go off. 
 
 S. Then I hope I shall be thankful : 
 
 but 
 
 B. But, what ? prithee, girl, do not be 
 always prophesying evil, or ringing knells 
 over us before we are dead. 
 
94 
 
 S. Oh dear ! how can you talk so, 
 brother ? I prophesy nothing ; I do not 
 pretend to it, but the thing fortells itself : 
 God has given us notice of it several times, 
 and as good as bid us expect it. Shall I 
 be so blind, and not take the warning ? 
 God forbid ! Indeed, brother, I cannot 
 help believing that it will certainly come 
 still. 
 
 B. Well, and is not this, as I say, 
 prophesying evil ? 
 
 S. No, brother, it is not ; because I do 
 not trouble any body with my talk. I 
 should not have said thus much to you, 
 but that you extort it. These are notices 
 to myself only. 
 
 B. But I would have you to be en- 
 couraged, and to encourage us all : you are 
 our Governess, and when you are dull and 
 melancholy all the family will be so. 
 
 S. I am not dull and melancholy : but 
 sure, brother, this is not a time to be 
 thoughtless : nobody can be so that has 
 any common sense. You were alarmed 
 
95 
 
 enough yourself but a week ago : and I do 
 not think you have lost those just im- 
 pressions it made upon you then, though 
 you are not Avilling they should be seen so 
 plainly as they were at that time. 
 
 B. It was all without reason, I verily 
 think. I see it was all nothing but the fright 
 of old women, and of foolish people, worse 
 than old women, that raised the tumult all 
 oyer the city. 
 
 S. Well, brother, if it prove so it will 
 be well : but I am sorry to see you cool so 
 fast upon it, before you are sure the danger 
 is over. 
 
 B. Child, the danger cannot be said to 
 be oyer, because it never was a real danger. 
 As an alarm and fright, it never had a 
 foundation, but in the imagination of a few 
 foolish people, who have so long talked the 
 town into expectation of the plague, that, 
 like wild-fire, they take at the first touch, 
 and away they run head-long with a story, 
 as if they icould have it be so : for fright 
 and wishes equally impose upon people, 
 
96 
 
 and make them believe any thing. When we 
 either desire to have a thing, or are terribly- 
 afraid of it, we believe it at the first word ; 
 at the most distant rumour of it. 
 
 S. But you are not sure, brother, that 
 you were imposed upon in this. 
 
 B. Yes, very sure, very sure : I am 
 satisfied it was all a rumour, a mere noise ; 
 and there is nothing at all in it but what 
 I tell you. 
 
 S. You do not know it of your own 
 knowledge, brother. 
 
 B. I have not been up thither indeed ; 
 but, if you wish it, I will go to the very 
 houses, and enquire into all the particulars ; 
 though T think I am very well informed 
 how it is. 
 
 S. By no means, brother : I would not 
 have you go for a thousand pounds. 
 
 B. I do not think there is any danger 
 in it at all ; I would not value going thither 
 a farthing : the people that were sick are 
 either in their graves, or well again, and 
 all is over. 
 
97 
 
 S. Well, brother, I can say nothing to 
 it : you know those things better than I. 
 However, as you have no occasion to go 
 thither, do not talk of that, I entreat you. 
 
 B. There is no occasion indeed, for I 
 am satisfied of the thing, and so is the 
 whole city in general. 
 
 S. Well, God fit us for all his will, 
 and grant we may be prepared to meet him, 
 with a due submission to all his providences, 
 of what kind soever ! 
 
 B. You are mighty solemn, child, about 
 it : it is strange you cannot be satisfied as 
 other people are. Why, your fright might 
 be over by this time one would think ; it is 
 almost a fortnight ago. 
 
 S. Dear brother, I hope I should not 
 be frighted if it were already come : but I 
 desire to be seriously looking up to heaven 
 for needful courage against the time ; for 
 I am fully persuaded it is not far off. 
 
 B. Well, I see you will not be beaten 
 off from it : you will be prophetic : but if 
 it were to be so, child, we cannot put it off : 
 F 
 
98 
 
 to what purpose should we anticipate our 
 sorrow, and be mourning about it whether 
 it comes or not ? 
 
 S. O brother, let us remember my 
 mother's words ; when it is upon us, it 
 will be no time to make our preparations. 
 The weight will then be too heavy ; the 
 warning too short. The plague is not a 
 thing that gives warning then, or that gives 
 time for repentance : now is the time for 
 preparation. 
 
 B. I hope, my dear, you are thoroughly 
 prepared for it : and therefore do not be 
 dejected, do not be so melancholy. I tell 
 you, child, you must encourage us all. 
 
 S. No, no, brother: I dare not say I 
 am prepared, and therefore I have cause to 
 be melancholy, as you call it : I have done 
 nothing and can do nothing but fly to the 
 arms of mercy. Alas ! my preparations 
 are poor mean things : you, brother, are 
 better prepared than I, to be sure ; or else 
 you could not have so much courage. 
 
 " Here her brother stood mute through 
 
99 
 
 his convictions of his own situation — 
 so different from what his sister had de- 
 scribed. She in consequence proceeded : 
 ' It is a good thing, brother, to have so 
 much temper in a case of this moment : I 
 wish I had more courage.' He repHed : 
 ' Well, we will talk of that another time : ' 
 and retired, overcome by the reflections 
 which pressed upon him. 
 
 " Well, said he to himself, this poor 
 child has more religion, ay, and more wis- 
 dom too, than all of us. In short she is 
 seriously preparing for the visitation if it 
 should come ; and, while I reproach her 
 with being frighted, it is evident I was more 
 frighted than she was, when the alarm of its 
 having broken out last w^eek at St. Giles's 
 ran among us. And should it really come 
 upon us I know not what to say : her 
 words are very true, it will be no time for 
 preparation then. 
 
 " The same day in the evening, being in 
 the counting-house with his brother, he 
 began to talk with him a httle about it, 
 F ^ 
 
100 
 
 Brother, said he, I cannot help having 
 some dull thoughts in my head sometimes, 
 about this talk that is so public, that we 
 are likely to have the plague among us this 
 summer. 
 
 2d. B. Some dull thoughts, do you 
 say ? I assure you I am almost distracted 
 about it. 
 
 1st. B. It v^ould put our business all 
 into confusion, if it should come. 
 
 2d. B. Into confusion ! nay, it would 
 ruin us all. 
 
 1st. B. No, I hope it would not ruin us, 
 either. 
 
 2d. B. It would ruin me, I am sure : 
 my very heart sinks within me when I 
 speak of it. 
 
 1st. B. What do you mean? Why, you 
 are worse than our governess. 
 
 2d. B. She, poor child ! she is in the 
 best case of us all : she is safe, come or not 
 come. I wish I were in her condition, 
 then I could have courage enough. 
 
 \st. B. You mean as to the religious 
 
101 
 
 part, I suppose. Indeed she is a serious 
 dear child : I have had a long discourse 
 with her about it, and she talks like an 
 angel. 
 
 2c?. B. She has been preparing for this 
 calamity a great while . she is happy. But 
 who can say they have done as she has 
 done ? 
 
 1st. B. But, hark ye : you talk as she 
 does in one part, as if you were sure we 
 should have it among us : I hope the 
 danger is over. 
 
 2d. B. Over ! how can you talk so ? 
 I wonder you can be so secure. 
 
 1st. B. Why, what have you heard 
 about it to-day ? 
 
 2d. B. Nay, I have heard nothing 
 to-day ; but you know how it is, as w^ell 
 as I. 
 
 1st. B. I know there were none in the 
 last week's bill, of the plague ; and I am 
 told there will be none in this. 
 
 2d. B. As to the bills, I wonder you 
 should lay any stress upon what they say. 
 
 F 3 
 
102 
 
 You know well enough they are managed, 
 not to put them in openly of the plague. 
 Private people get their dead put in of 
 other distempers, that their houses may 
 not be marked, or ordered to be shut up. 
 They bribe the searchers and parish officers : 
 and on the other hand the pubhc them- 
 selves are not willing to have the town 
 disquieted. It would make a terrible alarm 
 all over the world, you know : the ships 
 would every where be denied product : and 
 it would ruin trade at home and abroad. 
 But, alas ! that is a trifle to what I talk of. 
 
 \st. B. Why you talk as if it was not 
 over indeed ! Is it really your opinion then 
 that it is not over ? 
 
 2d. B. My opinion ! ay, and every 
 body's opinion too, besides mine. 
 
 \st. B. Why, by your discourse, it is 
 really begun. 
 
 2d. B. Depend upon it it is more than 
 begun, it has spread every way into several 
 streets in St. Giles's ; and they will not be 
 able to conceal it long. 
 
103 
 
 \st. B. You are enough to put the 
 whole town in a fright, brother ! Why, 
 you are as bad as my sister, the governess. 
 
 2d. B. Would I were as good as my 
 sister ! But what do you mean by being 
 as bad as she is ? She is frightened at it 
 then, I suppose, as I am. 
 
 Is^. B. Why truly I do not know whe- 
 ther she is or not ; for, when I came, about 
 a fortnight ago, and told her the plague 
 was begun, as you know we all heard it 
 was, she received the news with such a 
 composure of mind, as T confess I won- 
 dered at ; and, after a considerable time of 
 silence, answered only that it was the hand 
 of God, and He ought to do with us as 
 pleases Him. 
 
 2d. B. That was like her, indeed : but 
 do not say / am like her : I do not pretend 
 to it, I assure you : I am all horror and 
 confusion at the prospect before us. 
 
 1st. B. I do not say you are like her 
 in that respect : indeed I do not know it ; 
 Ijut you are like her in this, she is for 
 
104 
 
 alarming every body, as if the plague were 
 actually among us, when she knows nothing 
 of it : and so are you. 
 
 2(i. B. Well, but hark ye, brother ; 
 have a care of being in a worse extreme ; 
 for you seem to be lulling yourself asleep, 
 when you know the flame is kindled. 
 
 1st. B. Do I know it is kindled ? Do 
 not say so : I hope it is not. 
 
 Id. B. You cannot seriously say you 
 hope it is not : you may say, as I do, that 
 you wish it were not ; but you cannot but 
 know it is actually begun ; ay, and more 
 than begun, it has spread a great way 
 already, and in a very few weeks will be all 
 over the city. 
 
 1st. B. You make my blood run chill 
 in my veins : what do you mean ? I can- 
 not say I know it ; I was really of the 
 opinion that it was stopped again, and 
 that the danger was over, at least for the 
 present. 
 
 2d. B. And so your first apprehensions 
 cooled again, I perceive. 
 
105 
 
 \st. B. That was too much my case, I 
 confess. 
 
 2d. B. And it was mine too, after the 
 first appearance of it at Christmas last. I 
 have been just like a sick-bed penitent ; as 
 soon as the fear was over, the penitence 
 cooled and abated. But I feel the return 
 with a double reproach upon me ; I think 
 it will sink me before the distemper comes. 
 
 \st. B. Well, but do not be so positive : 
 I hope you are not so sure of the bad news 
 as you make yourself. ^ 
 
 2d. B. Dear brother, why you and I 
 know how these things are- abroad. Do 
 not you remember how the plague at Mes- 
 sina came creeping on just when we left 
 the city, and went away again two or three 
 times ; but, as soon as the sun advanced, 
 and they got into May, it broke out like a 
 fire that had been smothered with hot 
 ashes ; and what havoc it made ? And the 
 like at Gallipoli, and on the Calabrian 
 
 1 still clinging to the forlorn hope : instead of seeking better 
 grounded encouragement. 
 
 F 5 
 
106 
 
 coast ? Depend upon it, the distemper is 
 is only smothered with these northerly 
 winds ; hut, as soon as the winds become 
 westerly, and the weather is a little close 
 and warm, you will see dreadful work 
 here. I do not speak to alarm you, but 
 we should not be blind to our own 
 danger. 
 
 '* This discourse ended here for the 
 present : but the very next day, which was 
 the third or fourth of May, the youngest 
 brother having been out in the morning, 
 and coming into the counting-house, where 
 his brother was, wished very much to give 
 vent to his thoughts. He accordingly desired 
 one of their servants, who was there, to 
 withdraw ; and, shutting the door after 
 him, his brother was just going to open the 
 door again to go out too, but he said, Do 
 not go out, brother : I want to speak with 
 you. So his brother sat down, and, seeing 
 him look a little disordered, said. What is 
 the matter, brother ? have you heard any 
 bad news ? 
 
107 
 
 2d. B. Ay, ay, bad news enough : we 
 are all undone at last. 
 
 \st.B. What is it? What, do you 
 hear any more of the plague ? 
 
 2d. B. Any more of it ! why it is come 
 into the city. There is one dead in the 
 next street to us almost — in Bearbinder 
 Lane. 
 
 1st. B. What, of the plague itself? 
 
 2d. B. Ay, indeed: my Lord Mayor 
 sent two surgeons to examine the body, 
 and they have both given it in that he died 
 of the plague : he was a Frenchman. I 
 told you how it would be. 
 
 1st. B. Well, but this may be some 
 straggling loose fellow, that has come down 
 from St. Giles's for fear of it, because it 
 was there about a fortnight ago. 
 
 2d. B. Do not let us flatter ourselves 
 any longer, brother, or trifle with heaven : 
 it has spread at the other end of the town 
 into the Strand, and from thence into Hol- 
 born. You will see, in two or three weeks 
 more, what dreadful havoc it will make. 
 
108 
 
 1st. B. What shall we do brother? 
 What will become of us all ? and what will 
 become of the business ? 
 
 2d. B. Nay, what will become of our 
 souls ? I am undone, if I stay here ; I 
 will go over to France. 
 
 \st B. Alas ! it is too late for that, 
 brother : before you can get thither all their 
 ports will be locked up ; they will not let a 
 vessel from England come near them, you 
 may be sure. 
 
 2d. B. I am sure it is too late for 
 something else ; I have mocked God with 
 that part once already. 
 
 1st. B. You are enough to terrify one 
 to death : let us see a little about us, before 
 we talk thus. 
 
 2d, B. O brother, you do by the danger 
 as I have done by my preparations ; put it 
 oif as long as you can. You talk of seeing 
 about us ; why you will see in a very few 
 days the plague will be about us, and no 
 room to escape from it. I warrant you, 
 if you go but as far as the Exchange, you 
 
109 
 
 will see people preparing to get out of this 
 dreadful city as fast as they can, and all 
 trade in a kind of stagnation : and it is 
 time indeed it should be so. 
 
 1st. B. I do not see that we can go 
 out of it, at least not I ; unless I give up 
 all our business, and leave every thing to 
 be ruined, and to be a booty to the next 
 comer. 
 
 2d. B. I am sure if I stay here I shall 
 look on myself as a dead man. 
 
 1st. B. I hope not, brother; all do not 
 perish in the worst plague. Though the 
 plague w^ere to come, sure it would leave 
 some of us behind. 
 
 2d. B. But I have no reason to expect 
 that I should be kept. 
 
 \st. B. Why not? I hope you will : do 
 not be frighted. 
 
 2d. B. Oh I have mocked God, I say, 
 with my former preparations. When I 
 was justly alarmed, I pretended repentance 
 and reformation ; but when the fright was 
 over, and we flattered ourselves- that the 
 
110 
 
 destroying angel had passed, 1 cooled 
 and abated in my warmth, and became the 
 same loose wicked fellow I was before. I 
 have broken all my vows and resolutions, 
 and dropped my preparations ; and how can 
 I go about the same work again now ? 
 
 \st. B. I hope it will not be too late : 
 you talk like a distracted man : why it is 
 never too late to call upon God for mercy. 
 
 2d. B. No, but it may be too late to 
 obtain it. Besides, when the distemper 
 comes amongst us, what time, what temper, 
 what power to look up ? What capacity 
 to look inward ? What calling upon God 
 in the agonies of a plague swelling, or in 
 the distraction of the fever ? It is too late, 
 brother ; it should have been done before. 
 I am almost distracted already with the 
 thoughts of it. 
 
 \st. B. You will distract yourself and 
 me too at this rate : why, what must be 
 done ? 
 
 2d, B. I may well say. Lord be merciful 
 to me ! for I am at my wits' ends, and know 
 
Ill 
 
 not what to do. I wish you would let us 
 shut up the counting house, and be gone. 
 
 1st. B. Be gone ! whither shall we go ? 
 
 2d. B. Nay, any where : I am sure I 
 shall ;iever be able to stand it ; my very 
 heart dies within me at the apprehensions 
 and fright of it. 
 
 1st. B. But you must endeavour to 
 rouse up your spirits, and not be cast dow-n. 
 
 2d. B. Oh brother, whose heart can 
 endure, or whose hands be strong, in the 
 day that God shall deal with him ? God is 
 now^ taking us all into his own hands ; we 
 shall no more be able to trifle with him ; 
 repenting, and going back, and repenting 
 again, and going back again. Oh it is 
 dreadful work to make a jest of our repent- 
 ance as I have done ! 
 
 \st. B. I beseech you, brother, compose 
 yourself : you will die with the fright indeed, 
 at this rate. Come, I will go out and see 
 w^hat I can learn of it, and what measures 
 are to be taken. 
 
 " Thus this discourse ended also, and 
 
112 
 
 the elder brother went out into the city, 
 and he found it to be all true as his 
 brother had said ; that the plague had now 
 spread into several parishes at the other 
 end of the town, and that there were, in 
 particular, in the old place five or six fami- 
 lies infected, that is, at St. Giles's near 
 Long Acre, and about the north end of 
 Drury Lane. Also it had spread down 
 Drury Lane into St. Clement's parish, and 
 the other way into St. Andrew's, Holborn ; 
 so that it apparently went forward towards 
 the city : and the next weekly bill had nine 
 persons put in of the plague, besides those 
 that were concealed. 
 
 ** The elder brother came home in the 
 evening, and, as he found all that his bro- 
 ther had said was true, he was very anxious 
 about it, though he did not discover it so 
 much as his brother. In short the whole 
 house was very melancholy. It is tme, the 
 younger brother's melancholy was different 
 from the rest, being attended with a sadness 
 of a peculiar kind ; I mean the great con- 
 
113 
 
 cern he was under for his future state. He 
 had several conversations with his elder 
 brother, which chiefly turned upon the 
 measures that they were to take to preserve 
 themselves, and to put their business in a 
 posture to receive as little damage as pos- 
 sible, by so general an interruption as it 
 was likely to meet with : but he did not 
 receive any manner of satisfaction or com- 
 fort from him, in the particular thing that 
 afflicted him ; and, continuing very discon- 
 solate, his pious sister, who was greatly 
 concerned for him, one day, about ten days 
 after the first conversation with his brother, 
 came into his chamber, where he was sit- 
 ting very pensive and heavy, and began to 
 comfort him. 
 
 S. Dear brother, she said, I am very 
 sorry to see you in this melancholy, dis- 
 couraged condition : what can I do for 
 you ? It is a sad time with us all. 
 
 B. Poor child, he answered, thou canst 
 do nothing for me, but pray for me : do 
 that, child, however. 
 
114 
 
 S. I pray for you, brother ! That I do 
 always : but what am 7, that you should 
 ask me to pray for you ? Shall I send for 
 some good minister to pray with you, and 
 for you, and to comfort you ? that may be 
 of some use to you. 
 
 jB. No no : come sit down here, thou 
 art a good comforter enough to me. Tell 
 me, my dear, what upholds your mind in 
 this dismal time ; for you have the most 
 courage, and the most composure of mind, 
 they say, of the whole family. 
 
 S. No, no, you are quite wrong ; my 
 brother outdoes us all : he is like one 
 above it all, that lives unshaken with any 
 apprehensions whatever: he has a strong 
 faith. O that I had a heart so prepared, 
 so steady, so unconcerned as he has ! 
 
 B. Sister, sister, you mistake the point : 
 my brother puts the evil day far from him ; 
 buoys himself up with hopes that the judg- 
 ment will pass over ; and that it is not so 
 near or so certain, as we have all reason to 
 see it is : and he flatters himself with this, 
 
115 
 
 or with escaping it if it comes : I tell you 
 he has no more courage than other people : 
 but I think he is stupid. ... He knows 
 nothing of that happy condition you speak 
 of, nor I neither : you are in a better state 
 than any of us. 
 
 S. Dear brother, do not say so of me : 
 you grieve me extremely. I that am the 
 worst creature alive, w^iat state can I be 
 in ? I hope too you are wrong in the case 
 of my brother and yourself. 
 
 B. This is not a time, sister, to flatter 
 or compUment : the judgments of God are 
 coming upon us : what must be done ? 
 What is our work ? What is our duty? 
 
 ^. We talk of preparations, and some 
 preach up early preparations : I know no- 
 thing we can do, but learn to die at the feet 
 of Christ, as miserable penitents, this is all 
 I can come to.^ 
 
 B. Oh sister, if I could do that, I 
 should think myself safe. 
 
 ' Here the reader will find the more favourable construction 
 justified, which was put on the defective or objectionable 
 language of p. 79, 80. 
 
116 
 
 S. He will accept all that come unto 
 God by him. 
 
 B. But I should have come before : to 
 talk of it now is nothing ; we cannot now 
 be said to come, we are driven. 
 
 S. That is true ; but so his goodness is 
 pleased to act with us, that he will accept 
 those who are persuaded by the terrors of 
 the Lord, as well as those who are drawn 
 by his love. 
 
 B. There is no sincerity in coming now. 
 
 S. I hope there is, brother. 
 
 B. It is hard work to repent under dis- 
 tress ; and it is hard to be satisfied of our 
 own sincerity under such circumstances. 
 How shall I prepare now, that have not 
 gone about it till the judgments of God are 
 upon us ; and I am driven to it, as it were, 
 in the terrors of death ? 
 
 S. Do not discourage me, brother, while 
 you discourage yourself. The judgment of 
 God is begun, and we are to prepare for it ; 
 that is to say, to be ready to meet him with 
 our souls prostrate at his feet. We are to 
 
117 
 
 say, It is the Lord, let him do with us what 
 seemeth him good. And this is a work 
 proper to go about, even now : I am sure I 
 must go about it now as well as you. I 
 entreat you do not discourage me ; I want 
 all the helps to it possible. 
 
 B. I do not discourage you, sister : you 
 have been before-hand with the work ; you 
 have led a life of preparation a great while ; 
 / have lost all the time past, and that dou- 
 bles the work for the time to come. 
 
 8. I have done nothing, and can do 
 nothing ; neither can any of us do any 
 thing, but submit and be resigned. 
 
 B. We must submit and be resigned 
 as to God's disposing of us ; but I speak 
 of another work, sister, that lies hard and 
 heavy upon my spirits. I have a long mis- 
 spent life to look back upon : I have an 
 ocean of crimes to launch through, a weight 
 that sinks the soul, and, without God's in- 
 finite mercy, will sink it for ever. What 
 is resigning to God's disposal to this ? No 
 man can resign to be eternally lost ; no 
 
118 
 man can say he submits to be rejected of 
 God. I could cheerfully submit to what- 
 ever it pleases God to do with me here, 
 whether to die or to live ; but I must be 
 pardoned, sin must be done away, or I am 
 lost and undone : it cannot be said I can 
 resign that point. ^ 
 
 S. No, brother, I did not mean so: 
 we must resign our bodies, but we are 
 allowed to be humbly importunate for the 
 pardon of our sins, the sanctifying of our 
 hearts, and the saving of our souls : and 
 then we shall do the other with cheerfulness 
 and satisfaction. 
 
 B. Well, sister, now you come to my 
 case. This pardon is not to be obtained 
 but upon a sincere repentance, and a firm 
 faith in Christ ; and this the work, I say, 
 
 1 Well indeed is it when the solemn sense of eternity, of 
 the worth of the soul, of the evil of sin, and of danger by 
 sin, thus presses on the mind. It proceeds from the Spirit of 
 God, amid whatever remaining darkness it may exist ; and it 
 may be expected, therefore, to have a happy issue. O how 
 widely does it differ from the natural insensibility to such 
 subjects which commonly prevails ! 
 
119 
 
 I have still to do, and that you have not 
 neo-lected as I have done.^ 
 
 S, Oh, brother, I have done Httle ; I 
 have it every day to do, as well as you ; 
 and it is a work that must be renewed every 
 day : I desire to be every day applying to it 
 with all my power, and I hope you do so 
 too ; for we make fresh work for repent- 
 ance every day.^ 
 
 ' All this is " a work," and a most serious and important 
 work, calling for the greatest pains and diligence. Faith itself 
 is a '* work," or an act and operation of the mind ; (John vi. 
 27 — 29 ;) though it is not as a work of ours that it saves us, 
 but simply as connecting us with Christ, giving us an interest 
 in him, by whose merits and grace alone we are saved. Nor are 
 we left to perform these important works by our own power : 
 much less, when we do perform them are we to bring them as an 
 oflFering to God, to procure us the further blessings which we 
 need. No; they are his gifts to us, his works in us, though 
 we have duties to perform respecting them. " A new heart 
 will I give you ; " "I will take away the heart of stone, and 
 give you the heart of flesh," Repentance is his gift; Faith is 
 his gift ; though we are to exercise both one and the other ; 
 and though the exercise of them leads the way, and is 
 requisite, to the attainment of other gifts consequent upon 
 these. Ezek. xxxvi. 2h, 26, &c. ; Acts v. 31 ; Eph. ii. 8, &c. 
 
 * This is all true ; but let it still be borne constantly in 
 mind, that " The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth"— daily, 
 hourly, cleanseth — " from all sin," all them who thus " come 
 
120 
 
 B. It is a dreadful work to have to do 
 at such a time as this. 
 
 S. But, brother, though the having 
 deferred our repentance to the last gasp, be 
 a discouraging thing ; and that, as you say, 
 a sick-bed, or the time of visitation, is not 
 a time for it ; yet, blessed be God, it is not 
 forbidden then : these said circumstances 
 do not make our repentance unlawful ; they 
 only unfit us for it. Neither does repent- 
 ing at last make our repentance insincere, 
 (as you seem to imply,) though it may, in- 
 deed, render it suspected to ourselves. 
 
 B. It takes away all the comfort of re- 
 pentance ; that I am sure of ; and much of 
 the hope of it, too. 
 
 S. But not to go about it at all is still 
 worse, brother. 
 
 B, I know not what to go about, or 
 when to go about it. 
 
 to God by him ;" that, though there is much remaining, but 
 not indulged, sinfulness, yet " there is no condemnation to 
 them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, 
 but after the Spirit." 1 John i. 7 ; Rom. viii. 1. 
 
121 
 
 S. I hope you know, brother, both 
 what to do, and when. 
 
 B. The time is lapsed : death is at the 
 door ; what can be done now ? It is not 
 w^hat our particular frame or temper may 
 be just now, but what the main course and 
 tenor of life have been : we are to be judged 
 accordmg to our works} 
 
 ^ Here again is another important truth introduced, which 
 is often misapprehended and misapplied. All shall, at last, be 
 "judged according to their works." The impenitent sinner 
 shall be judged and condemned both according to, and/o;-, his 
 works, of which his " not believing in the nameof the only-be- 
 gotten Son of God" is the crime that consummates his guilt, 
 and seals his condemnation. (John iii. IS.) The believer in 
 Christ, though neither at first, nor at last, justified/or his works, 
 shall yet be judged according to them; that is, * the course 
 and tenor of his life,' from the time of his truly believing in 
 Christ, will be the evidence and proof that his was a living 
 faith, and not a mere profession ; and that, consequently, he 
 was " in Christ," and justified through him. And, this buing 
 the case, all the sins of his previous life, as well as all the 
 evils and imperfections which he had to lament to the end of 
 his days, "shall not be mentioned unto him;" they are 
 '* cast into the depths of the sea ;" they shall "no more be 
 found." Rom. ii. 5 — 11. 2 Cor, v. 10. Rev. xx. 13, John v. 
 28,29. Matt. XXV. 31— 46.— Rom. iii. 24. v. I, 2, 9. viii. 1. 
 1 John i. 7. ii. 1, 2. Jer, 1. 20. Ezek. xviii. 22. xxxiii. 16. 
 Mic, vii. 19. 
 
122 
 
 S. It is true ; the evil, I judge, is at 
 hand, though I know nothing how it is. 
 My hrother told me the plague had ceased 
 again, and all was over. But I lay no 
 stress upon that ; I desire to be always 
 as I should be, if it were upon me in par- 
 ticular. 
 
 jB. Indeed it is far from being over ; it 
 is increasing every day. It has got into 
 three or four parishes at the other end of 
 the town, and it spreads this way apace. 
 
 S. Well, brother, it is a loud call upon 
 us to improve the few days we have left. 
 
 B. I resolve not to lose a moment, but 
 to apply the time that remains as much as 
 possible. But, alas ! what can I do ? Is 
 it not all a mere force, a fright ? If the 
 sickness should go off, I shall be just the 
 same again. 
 
 S. You pass sentence upon yourself too 
 rashly, brother. You are no more sure 
 you shall do so, than you are sure you shall 
 go to heaven. 
 
 B, I have a sad rule to judge by. I 
 
123 
 
 have done so once already, when we had 
 the same apprehensions five months ago ; 
 and what less can I infer ? I shall be just 
 the same man again : for this is all the 
 same thing. It is being driven into a har- 
 bour by a storm : as soon as the storm is 
 over, the ship puts to sea again, and goes 
 on the same voyage she was going before, 
 and steers the same course she steered be- 
 fore ; and so shall I. I am only driven to 
 my knees by the storm. ^ 
 
 S. I hope not, brother. You know the 
 story of the Prodigal : he w^as driven by 
 evident misery and starving — as bad a storm 
 as any man can be driven by. He tells you, 
 / perish for hunger : he never thought of 
 
 ^ We have here principally pourtrayed to us the additional 
 anxiety which, in such circumstances, the mind treasures up 
 to itself, that has not only put off repentance, but turned back 
 again to a life of negligence and sin, after having seemed to 
 repent and turn to God. Let it be a warning to all against such 
 a course; and let us remember, that the only preservative 
 from it is calling upon God, without ceasing, that he would 
 "create in us a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within us." 
 (Ps. li. 9, 10.) Nothing short of this thorough change will be 
 permanent. 
 
 G 2 
 
124 
 
 returning to his father, till he was ready to 
 perish ; that is, just at the gate of de- 
 struction. 
 
 B. That is but a parable, sister. 
 
 S. But remember, brother, what the 
 moral of it was ; what the design of the 
 story ; and, above all, who told it. 
 
 B. That is true; but what is that 
 moral to my case ? 
 
 S. Why, brother, he that told that 
 story, with his own mouth, is the same 
 father who is to accept of us prodigals ; 
 and, I think, he clearly tells us there, that 
 he will receive us, however late, and by 
 whatever necessity or distress we are driven, 
 if we truly turn to him. What else did he 
 tell us that story for ? 
 
 B, That is a comforting application of 
 it indeed ; and I think it will hold. 
 
 S. I hope it is a true application of it, 
 brother. I am glad it seems to be season- 
 able to your case. 
 
 B. It is so seasonable to me, that no- 
 thing can be more so. Dear sister, you 
 
125 
 
 are a healing preacher to me : that very 
 case is my case ; and, as you say, our 
 blessed Lord gives a plain call in it to every 
 distressed prodigal, to come back when 
 he is ready to perish. 
 
 S. I am no preacher, brother ; I am 
 but a girl, a child, in these things ; but the 
 story of the Prodigal came into my mind 
 just then : I hope you are no prodigal. 
 
 B. Yes, yes, I am a prodigal ; I have 
 wasted the substance that I had given 
 me ; the time and talents of health and 
 strength that have been spared me ; and 
 now I am just like him, ready to perish. 
 Death is at the door. If this passage came 
 into your mind, as you say, without any 
 forethought, it was God's goodness that 
 put it into your thoughts : it was spoken 
 for me ; I will observe it ; I will return to 
 my Father, and say. Father, I have sinned 
 against heaven and before thee, make me 
 as one of thy hired servants. 
 
 S. Blessed be God for the encourage- 
 ment you have from it ! I desire to make 
 
 G 3 
 
126 
 
 the same use of it myself,^ — But here is 
 my brother : I hear him ring at the door. 
 
 B. Well, then, we shall have some 
 further account of things ; dreadful news, 
 I do not question. 
 
 S. Well, brother, you have been at the 
 Exchange, I hear ; what news have you ? 
 how do things go on ? 
 
 \st. B. Truly I know not what to say ; 
 it is bad enough : but it is not worse than 
 it was ; at least they tell us so. I have the 
 account that will be in to-morrow's weekly 
 bill ; it was brought to my Lord Mayor, as 
 it seems was ordered every week before it 
 was printed. 
 
 2d. B. What ! that is, I suppose, that 
 
 ' We have arrived now at a beautiful and affecting part of 
 the narrative. We begin to see the sight over which " there 
 is joy in the presence of the angels of God " — the sinner 
 coming to repentance. Here are the beginnings, the happy 
 beginnings, of both repentance and faith. Blessed is the case 
 when the word of God thus comes home to the mind "with 
 power," and when well-known passages impress it in a new 
 manner, and in their application to itself. W^e must say. 
 This is the finger of God ! It is from the Holy Ghost ! 
 I Thess. i. 5. ii. 13. 
 
127 
 
 the number may not be made too large in 
 the article of the plague. They may do 
 what they will, but the people will know 
 these things ; and, if they see any tricks 
 used with them, they will think the worse 
 of it. 
 
 1st. B. How can you suggest such a 
 thing, brother ? there is no room for it ; 
 the number is known, and every body is 
 allowed to see it. 
 
 S. And pray how many is it, brother ? 
 
 \st. B. Why the whole number is but 
 seventeen : and there were fourteen last 
 week ; so that the increase is but three, 
 which is no great matter ; and it is all at 
 that end of the town. 
 
 2d. B. Mark, now, how partial my 
 brother is in his relation : he says there are 
 but seventeen of the plague ; but pray how 
 many are there of the spotted fever ? 
 
 1^^ B. Truly there are a good number 
 of that distemper ; I think twenty-three. 
 
 2d. B. That is part of the cheat I told 
 you of: people conceal the distemper as 
 
128 
 
 much as they can, that their customers 
 may not shun their shops : and so they put 
 them in of the spotted fever, or any thing 
 they can get the searchers to return, when 
 the deaths are really of the plague. 
 
 1^^. B, I can say nothing to that ; I 
 take things always for true when authority 
 publishes them. 
 
 2d, B. I am for being imposed upon 
 by nobody ; especially in a case that so 
 nearly touches my life as this does. 
 
 S. I think there is not much in it 
 either way : it is plain the plague is begun, 
 and spreads apace : and it is not much to 
 the purpose how many it increases this 
 week or next : the case will be decided 
 in three or four weeks more, beyond all 
 cavil. 
 
 2d. B. Nay, as it is, w^e see it spreads 
 apace this way. 
 
 \st. B. But it is not yet come into the 
 city, except that one man who died in 
 Bearbinder Lane a month ago. 
 
 S. Another month or two, brother, will 
 
129 
 
 shew us quite a different face of things ; 
 and instead of seventeen or twenty, you 
 will see a thousand a week, perhaps more. 
 
 \st, B. God forhid I Sister, I beseech 
 you do not prophesy evil tidings. 
 
 2d. B. Brother, I beseech you do not 
 flatter yourself : will you never be alarmed ? 
 Do you consider the numbers of people that 
 there are in such a city as this ? My sister 
 talks of a thousand a week : if it comes to 
 be a thorough infection there may be five 
 times so many die in a week, and the 
 whole town be a mere Pesthouse and a 
 desolation. 
 
 S. My brother sees us discouraged, and 
 it is only that he is not willing to have us 
 too much frighted : but a few weeks will 
 put us all out of doubt. 
 
 \st. B. I do not either alarm you, or 
 endeavour to make you secure ; but I see 
 you are both resolved to have it be thought 
 worse than it is, and I am for having it 
 called nothing but ichat it is. >S'o many 
 have died of it last week ; and as many 
 G 5 
 
130 
 
 more have died of several particular dis- 
 tempers : it is time enough to be frighted 
 and hurried, when we see it come upon us : 
 I am not for making things worse than 
 they are. 
 
 2d. B. Well, brother, that is a good 
 way of talking enough, to them that are 
 ready and prepared for the worst, as my 
 sister says you are ; and I am glad to hear 
 that you are. But the more unhappy it is 
 for me : for my work is yet to do. I have 
 different reasons for being more alarmed 
 than you, for I am utterly unprepared for 
 it, God knows ! 
 
 aS*. Ay, and I too. 
 
 \st. B. You are enough to terrify any 
 one to death, both of you : if you are un- 
 prepared, you must go and prepare then, 
 if you think fit : for my part I cannot bear 
 to hear you talk thus. — He goes out. 
 
 S. Brother, let us take the hint, and 
 set about the work. 
 
 B. Oh, sister, is it in any one's power 
 to prepare himself for such a terrible time 
 
131 
 
 as this ? How is it to be done ? and what 
 can we do ? 
 
 ^. The preparation of the heart is of 
 the Lord. Prov. xvi. 1. 
 
 B. We talk of preparations as if there 
 was a stated settled form of preparing for 
 the plague, which being performed we 
 were ready for it whenever it came : for 
 my part, I know no preparation for the 
 plague, but a preparation for death : he 
 that is ready to die is ready to have the 
 plague. 
 
 S. I understand it so exactly. 
 
 B. Why then, dear sister, you are 
 entirely of my mind. Will you then join 
 with me, and let us set upon the great 
 work, as well together as apart. Let us 
 lay our account for death : that is, settle it 
 with ourselves that we shall die of this visi- 
 tation ; and endeavour to bring our souls 
 to such a frame, as that we may with 
 cheerfulness throw ourselves into the arms 
 of divine mercy, through the merit of 
 Jesus Christ, whenever he shall summon 
 
132 
 
 us ; be it by this dreadful visitation, or by 
 what other providence he thinks fit. 
 
 S. 1 am very little able to forward you 
 in such a work ; but I will join in any 
 thing that I aro able, as well with respect 
 to my own part, as to any thing else we 
 can do together. 
 
 B. But what do you look upon to be 
 the first work ? 
 
 S. The first thing I can think of is a 
 full resolution, a firm purpose of heart, to 
 forsake all our sins, and to return heartily 
 to God whom we have offended. 
 
 B. By returning to God, I suppose 
 you understand repenting sincerely for all 
 our past sins, mourning unfeignedly over 
 them, and calling upon God for pardon 
 and forgiveness. 
 
 S. I do so : and there is great en- 
 couragement for us to do this, in the 
 Scriptures. Come, and let us return unto 
 the Lord : for he hath torn and he will heal 
 us ; he hath smitten and he luill bind us up, 
 — Let the wicked forsake his way, and the 
 
133 
 
 unrighteous man his thoughts : and let him 
 return unto the Lord, and he will have 
 mercy upon him; and to our God, for he 
 will abundantly pardon ^ 
 
 B. This is true : but how shall we do 
 this ? and who can effectually return to 
 God ? It is a hard work. 
 
 S. We must look up to him for assist- 
 ance, even in this very work. Turn thou 
 us, Lord, unto thee, and ice shall be 
 turned : renew our days as of old. — I have 
 surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself 
 thus. Thou hast chastised me, and I ivas 
 chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the 
 yoke : turn thou me, and I shall be turned ; 
 for thou art the Lord my God. — Repent, 
 and turn yourselves from all your transgres- 
 sions ; so iniquity shall not he your ruin. 
 Cast away from you all your transgressions, 
 whereby ye have transgressed, and make you 
 a new heart and a new spirit ; for why will 
 ye die, house of Israel ^. 
 
 ^ Hos. vi. 1. Isa. Iv. 7. 
 
 2 Lam. V. 21. Jer. xxxi. 18. Ezek. xviii. 30—32. 
 
134 
 
 B. There is another text which touches 
 my very soul every time I read it : me- 
 thinks it speaks to me : it is the very sort 
 of turning that I think I want ; and it 
 seems to he even a direction to me how to 
 turn, and what turning to God means in 
 his own sense of it ; how he is pleased to 
 understand it, or what it is he will accept 
 as a sincere turning to him. It is in Joel 
 ii. 12, 13. Therefore also now, saith the 
 Lord, turn ye even to me with all your 
 heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, 
 and with mourning : and rend your heart 
 and not your garments, and turn unto the 
 Lord your God : for he is gracious and 
 merciful, slow to anger, and of great kind- 
 ness, and repent eth him of the evil. 
 
 S. That is an extraordinary place in- 
 deed : I had omitted it, but I remember 
 it very well, and the words of the verse 
 before it seem to make the reason for that 
 particular call, of turning to God, to be 
 much the same with what is before us. 
 
 B. I did not look at that part : the 
 
135 
 
 call ^Yas loud to me ; and I see reason 
 enough before me: it affected me indeed 
 exceedingly. 
 
 S. But the words immediately before 
 will add to it still : pray look here. 
 
 B. They are solemn indeed : ver. 1 1 . 
 For the day of the Lord is great and very 
 terrible, who can abide it ? Ay, who can 
 abide it ? — Who indeed can abide it ? It is 
 our case just now : the judgment that is 
 now coming upon us may well be said to be 
 the day of the Lord ; and it is very terrible 
 indeed, none can be able to abide it. 
 
 S. The next words are ushered in with 
 this as a reason for them, Therefore turn 
 unto the Lord with all your heart ; with 
 fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, 
 
 B. Dear sister, this is indeed our direc- 
 tion : let us obey the voice of our rule. 
 This is a scripture rule, and we cannot be 
 wrong in it. 
 
 S. Nay, they are the words of God 
 himself; that is to say, the prophet speaks 
 them as immediately from God, and in his 
 
136 
 
 very name, Therefore also now, saith the 
 Lord : and the next words are as if God 
 spoke immediately, Turn ye even to me. 
 
 B. This is a call to us ; to me, sister, 
 in particular, and I have great reason thus 
 to turn ; and to do it in the particular 
 manner directed — luitli fasting, with weep- 
 ing, and with mourning. 
 
 S. It is a call to me, as well as to you, 
 brother : and I have as much reason to 
 think it is directed particularly to me, as 
 you can have, and more too, much more ^ 
 
 B. Dear sister, let us dispute that no 
 longer : will you join with me in this 
 work ? shall we repent together, and hum- 
 ble our souls together ? 
 
 S. Ay, brother, with all my heart: I 
 will be thankful to you for so much help in 
 such a work. 
 
 B. We have opportunity now to help 
 and assist one another. God alone knows 
 how long we may be continued together ; 
 
 1 Such will ever be the feelings of true penitence. 1 Tim. 
 i. 15. Phil. ii. 3. 
 
137 
 
 how long it may be before we may be 
 snatched from one another, or both snatched 
 away as it were together. 
 
 S. I rejoice at the motion, brother: I 
 have had no helps before ; I have been 
 alone in all things of this nature. I bless 
 God for the offer, and will join you in every 
 thing that you desire of me, and, above all, 
 in receiving help and counsel and assistance 
 from you ^ 
 
 Here we can follow this happy couple no 
 further at present, in their particular con- 
 versation : but it is to be recorded for the 
 example and encouragement of others, in a 
 like case, that they agreed to spend two 
 hours eveiy evening and an hour every 
 morning in her closet, where they prayed 
 together, read the Scriptures together, and 
 
 ' And who shall say that the mutual concurrence of near 
 relatives and dear friends — their combined effort to help one 
 another in the greatest and best of ail undertakings — is not 
 reasonable, commendable, delightful, and a thing to be imi- 
 tated ? 
 
138 
 
 discoursed together, as their particular cir- 
 cumstances made it seasonable. In these 
 retirements the brother prayed, and made a 
 daily confession of sin ; the sister read the 
 Scriptures ; and in their discourses they 
 were mutual. Beside this, they locked 
 themselves up every Tuesday and Friday, 
 and kept the whole day as a solemn fast, 
 neither eating nor drinking till about four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. And on these 
 occasions it might be truly said of them 
 both, that they humbled themselves greatly 
 before the Lord their God; and, as the 
 Scripture above-mentioned directed, they 
 did it with fasting, ivith weeping, and with 
 mourning. 
 
 The young man in particular was a 
 pattern for penitents ; and in an especial 
 manner he was afflicted, and continually 
 reproached himself, for having put off his 
 preparation and repentance formerly, till 
 the very judgment was at the door ; and 
 for having been once before touched with 
 a like sense of his danger, but growing cold 
 
139 
 
 and unconcerned again, as the danger 
 abated and went off. This robbed him much 
 of the comfort of his present appHcation ; 
 and he continually upbraided himself with 
 it, as if it had been a test of his future 
 insincerity : and it was very discouraging 
 to him. He would also frequently observe 
 on that head, how much all persons should 
 guard against falling back from their own 
 professions ; how sad a token of hypocrisy 
 it was to do so ; and how hard it would be 
 for those who had done so, if ever they 
 came to be true penitents, to believe them- 
 selves such, or to receive the comfort of 
 their own humiliations.^ 
 
 In this distress of his mind he received 
 great assistance from the comforting dis- 
 courses and excellent example of his pious 
 sister, who was now the companion of his 
 
 * This expression again may be "thought by some exception- 
 able : but is obviously not meant that "our humiliations" are 
 to be the basis of our acceptance or our confidence, but only the 
 yroofs that we are brought to that state of mind to which com- 
 fort is spoken. Ps. li. 17. Isa. Ivii. 15. Ixvi. 2. Matt. v. 3, &c. 
 
140 
 
 best hours, and his support in his greatest 
 discouragements. She had given the first 
 Hfe to his resolutions, by hinting to him 
 that our blessed Saviour himself v^as the 
 author of that parable of the Prodigal ; and 
 that, as it was said introductory to the 
 parable of the unjust Judge, that he spake 
 a parable to them to this end, that men 
 ought always to pray, and not to faint ; so 
 it might be said of the parable of the 
 Prodigal, that he spake a parable to this 
 end, that men ought always to return to 
 God their Father, when they are in distress, 
 and not to decline for its being late. She 
 had upon all occasions repeated to him 
 such encouraging texts of Scripture as oc- 
 curred to her to support his resolutions ; 
 and she was daily searching the Bible for 
 such texts as might be particularly adapted 
 to these purposes. 
 
 It happened that under one of his 
 greatest discouragements — most of which 
 began at the doubts he had upon his mind 
 of his own sincerity, and of his being 
 
141 
 
 accepted, because of his not having applied 
 himself to his humiliation till it pleased 
 God to bring the terror of the plague upon 
 him, and till the judgment was, as it were, 
 at the door •} under one of the worst of these 
 his dejections, his sister thought of ano- 
 ther example. ' Come, brother,' said she, 
 ' I have another Scripture instance for your 
 encouragement, where God accepted one of 
 the worst wretches that ever lived, and who 
 never returned till he was brought to the 
 greatest extremity. A greater instance of 
 wickedness never was in the world : nor did 
 he ever think of returning, that we read of, 
 
 ' Two grounds of discouragement are here stated : 1 . 
 Doubts of his own sincerity : and 2. Distrust arising from 
 the lateness of his repentance. The latter must be at once 
 rejected, and dispelled by simply believing the abundant testi- 
 monies of the Gospel, that " he who cometh shall in no wise 
 be cast out." The former are not without ground both from 
 reason and scripture : they are not to be pronounced simply in 
 themselves unbelief: on the contrary, they may be even in- 
 creased by the belief of many scriptural cautions and warnings : 
 but they must be removed by perseverance in coming to the 
 Saviour, and in the use of such prayers as that of the Psalmist, 
 *' Make my heart sound in thy statutes, that I may never be 
 ashamed." 
 
142 
 
 till God stmck him, and brought him down 
 to the lowest degree of misery : and yet, 
 upon his humbling himself, he was ac- 
 cepted. Will such an example comfort 
 you ? ' * I think,' he replied, ' you were 
 born to comfort me ; who was it ? ' ' Here 
 it is,' said she ; ' take it as it is recorded on 
 purpose to encourage penitents under the 
 worst circumstances. It is the story of 
 Manasseh, the most wicked of all the kings 
 of God's people, 2 Chron. xxxiii. In the 
 beginning of the chapter, to the 7th verse, 
 you have an account of his wickedness ; 
 such as the like was never in Jerusalem 
 before him, in doing abominable things, 
 profaning God's house and his altar, prac- 
 tising witchcraft and sorcery, and dealing 
 with the devil. Also, verse 10, it is said, 
 The Lord spake to him, hut he would not 
 hearken : so that he resisted even God him- 
 self, and rejected the gracious call of God 
 to him to repent. This, brother, was 
 much worse than what you call growing 
 cold and negligent, and letting your sense 
 
143 
 
 of things wear off. — Well, after this, verse 
 1 1 ; Wherefore the Lord brought upon them 
 the captains of the host of the king of As- 
 syria, which took Manasseh among the 
 thorns, and bound him with fetters, and 
 carried him to Babylon, This was driving 
 him, as you call it, with a witness : he was 
 pulled down from a throne to a dungeon ; 
 from a crown of gold and chains of gold, 
 as ornaments, to chains of iron to fetter 
 and bind him, as one kept for execution. 
 But now see ver. 12, 13 : And when he was 
 in affliction he besought the Lord his God, 
 and humbled himself greatly before the God 
 of his fathers ; and prayed unto him: and 
 he was entreated of him, and heard his 
 supplication, and brought him again to 
 Jerusalem, into his own kingdom. Then 
 Manasseh knew that the Lord he ivas God. 
 — Now, brother,' said she, ' what think you 
 of all this V ' Tears of joy ran down his 
 face while she read the words of the two 
 last verses ; and, when she asked him at 
 last what he thought of it ; ' Think of it ? ' 
 
144 
 
 said he, 'my dear sister ! my happy com- 
 forter ! I think I will never he discouraged 
 more.' And he was in a great degree as 
 good as his word ; for he was exceedingly 
 encouraged by it upon all occasions, and 
 had recourse to that example, whenever his 
 reflection upon his late repentance gave him 
 any sad thoughts. 
 
 But he leaves it as a seasonable caution 
 for us, upon whom the like circumstance of 
 a national visitation seems to be coming, 
 that our preparations may not be adjourned 
 till the judgment is upon us ; for, though 
 it may not be inefl'ectual, through God's 
 mercy, for any one to repent then, however 
 late, yet it will rob us of great comfort, 
 make the danger a thousand times more 
 dreadful, and fill us always with dark and 
 discouraging thoughts ; and it will be very 
 hard to bear up the mind under them. 
 He warns all men by his example, that, 
 when preparations for death have been long 
 put off, it is so much the harder to begin 
 them at all, and the heart, once hardened by 
 
145 
 
 frequent delaying and putting it oif, is not 
 easily softened to the serious work again : 
 and, if it shall at last be brought to go about 
 it heartily, it will yet go with a hea^'y and 
 afflicted mind ; and those delays of repent- 
 ance will be the most abhorred things, even 
 equal to the sins that are to be repented of. 
 And nothing is more certain, than that, 
 when people put off those preparations to 
 the last, God is often pleased to deny the 
 gift of repentance in their extremity, or at 
 least for a great while ; and sometimes to 
 withhold the comfort of it to the last gasp. 
 But I proceed with the story of the family 
 before me. 
 
 " These two happy penitents went on in 
 this course for some time. Some short dis- 
 courses which happened between them, 
 could they have been entirely preserved, 
 might have been very useful to others. The 
 following however may not be unprofitable. 
 The brother, it being during one of their 
 private fasts, began thus : 
 
 B. Sister, we are under the apprehen- 
 u 
 
146 
 
 sions of a terrible judgment, which is 
 already begun, and increases dreadfully 
 among us ; pray let us state between us, 
 what is our work upon that account at 
 this time. 
 
 S. I believe I understand you, brother ; 
 you would have us state what we mean by 
 preparations ; for these are the things we 
 talk much of, and others too, when they 
 speak any way seriously. Indeed I have 
 often asked myself, what I mean by pre- 
 parations for the plague ? 
 
 B. Well, and how did you answer your 
 own question ? 
 
 S. Why, I answered it as I heard you 
 mention it once to my brother, and I 
 thought you had given a very right ac- 
 count of it ; namely, that preparations for 
 the plague were preparations for death, 
 and that they ought to be so understood. 
 
 B. Well, but the question is much the 
 same still, namely, what is it to make pre- 
 parations for death ? or what preparations 
 are proper to be made for death ? 
 
147 
 
 ^. It is a hard question, brother, and 
 requires a better head than mine to give an 
 answer to it. 
 
 £. But, sister, that which is worse is, 
 that the preparations I mean are to be sup- 
 posed to be made by a man that has been a 
 hardened, extravagant wretch, guilty of 
 great crimes. 
 
 S. One that has been old in sin, and 
 that has put off all the calls to repentance, 
 whether proceeding from conscience or 
 from nature, from reason or from religion, 
 from God or from man. 
 
 B. Ay, just as I have done, sister. 
 
 S. No, no ; not as you have done, but 
 as you say you have done. 
 
 B. Well, let that rest : what must such 
 an one do ? what must his preparations be ? 
 
 S. The first thing, brother, I can think 
 of, is included in that scripture. Lam. iii. 
 40 : Let us search and try our ways, and 
 turn again unto the Lord. 
 
 B. The description is most apt to the 
 purpose; search and try our ways: which, 
 II 2 
 
148 
 
 as I understand it, is self-examination of 
 the strictest, closest kind. 
 
 S. Searching ; that is, a looking back 
 upon our past life, and into every action of 
 it ; not hiding or dropping this search in 
 any particular part that can be brought 
 to memory ; not covering any part, but 
 searching ourselves to the bottom, 
 
 B. And then trying the quality of every 
 action, bringing ourselves to the bar of our 
 consciences, and there impartially subject- 
 ing every action of our lives to the 
 judgment of reason and conscience ; deter- 
 mining with an unbiassed sincerity, whether 
 such ways and such actions are justifiable 
 at the bar of God or not. 
 
 S. Blessed be God, there is a bar of 
 conscience, at which we may arraign our- 
 selves, and where, if we try the cause 
 impartially, we may make a right judgment 
 of our actions, and know in what posture 
 we stand. 
 
 B. But, O sister, what is my case ? I 
 see before hand what is my case : I cannot 
 
149 
 
 stand before the judgment-seat of my own 
 heart, how then shall I appear at His tri- 
 bunal, w^here all must appear in its true 
 light. 
 
 *S'. Do not say this is your case, as if 
 none were in that case but you. I am in 
 the same condition : my own heart con- 
 demns me, and God is greater than our 
 hearts. I have nothing to say but this, 
 Enter not into judgment with me, Lord, 
 for in thy sight shall no man living be jus- 
 tified. Psalm cxliii. 2. 
 
 B. If then w^e bring our actions faith- 
 fully to the bar of reason and conscience, 
 we shall then see our state : w^e shall see 
 w^hat our condition is, and what it will be 
 at the bar of God's judgment. 
 
 S. Certainly we may. 
 
 B. Then I must see, and do see, that 
 at that bar I shall be condemned. 
 
 S- Yes, brother, and I too and every 
 one ; for in his sight shall no man living be 
 justified, as his own actions, brought to 
 this judgment, will appear. But let us go 
 
 H 3 
 
150 
 
 back to the text again : Let us search and try 
 our ways : what is next ? 
 
 B. Blessed be God, it follows, and turn 
 again to the Lord. This then is our work 
 at this time. 
 
 S. Dear brother, our work, in short is 
 self-examination and repentance : first ex- 
 amination, then humiliation. 
 
 B. It is plain first : search and try our 
 ways, and then turn from them to the Lord. 
 It is taken there as a conclusion, that, upon 
 searching and trying our ways, we shall find 
 they will not bear a trial, either at the bar 
 of God or at the bar of conscience. There- 
 fore we are to turn from them. 
 
 S. That is our next work : and how is 
 that to be done ? 
 
 B. That brings us to the other text, 
 Joel ii. 12, 13. It must be with all our 
 hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with 
 mourning. How shall we do this, sister? 
 
 S. Well, brother, but let us go on, and 
 see the fruit of it too : read the next verse, 
 13: And rend your heart, and not your 
 
151 
 
 garments, and turn unto the Lord your God : 
 for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, 
 and of great kindness, and repenteth him 
 of the evil. 
 
 B. Nay, sister, go on with them, verse 
 14 : Who knoiveth if he will return and 
 repent, and leave a blessing behind him ? 
 Here is encouragement, sister : let us set 
 about this work, /or he is gracious and mer- 
 ciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness} 
 
 '' Here is one of their discourses, or atleast 
 a part of it : and herein may be seen some- 
 thing of that true work of preparation for 
 the plague. Let none flatter themselves 
 with less than this. They who pretend to 
 be making preparations for the plague, that 
 is to say, for death, any other way than by 
 searching and trying their ways, and turn- 
 ing to the Lord, with fasting, with weeping, 
 and with mourning; that is to say, with 
 sincere humiliation and repentance ; will 
 
 ' Let the reader only suspend his judgment a little, and 
 wait the result. Our author is himself sensible of the imperfect 
 state in which the subject is here left. After a sliort time the 
 deficiency will be supplied in a very gratifying manner. 
 
152 
 
 but mock and deceive themselves, and will 
 find they have made no preparations at all 
 
 I must leave this pious couple now a 
 while, as to their retirements, and take 
 them in common, in conversation with 
 their brother and the family. The visita- 
 tion came on ; the plague spread dread- 
 fully ; death came like an armed man, and 
 swept away the people like an overflowing 
 stream. It w^as now five weeks after the 
 last discourse between the two brothers and 
 the sister, and since the two penitents had 
 thus retired together, when the younger 
 brother, having been out in the city, came 
 in again and found his elder brother con- 
 versing with his sister. And now his manner 
 of talking was quite changed : his tale was 
 turned, as you shall see. 
 
 1^^. jB. O brother, why will you venture 
 to go out ? 
 
 2d. B. Out, why what can be done ? we 
 must go out for family necessaries. 
 
 1st. B. We have been greatly overseen 
 
153 
 
 in that, not to have a store of provisions 
 in the house, since we are obliged to stay : 
 you know they did quite otherwise at 
 Naples. 
 
 2c/. B. That is true ; but it is too late now. 
 
 1^^. B. It is not too late for some things, 
 however : we might get a stock of bread and 
 beer into the house ; and you see my mother 
 sends us every week fresh provisions from 
 the countiy, sufficient for ourselves, at least. 
 
 2cL B. She does just now, but it will not 
 be long ; no messenger or servant will 
 dare to bring it a little time hence ; the 
 plague increases so much. The other end 
 of the town is a mere desolation with it ; 
 it begins to come round us : I hear it is got 
 over into Southwark this week, and six or 
 eight have died on that side already. 
 
 1st. B. Well, what shall we resolve to 
 do ? Shall w^e venture to stay, or shall we 
 lock up our doors and be gone ? What 
 say you, sister ? 
 
 *S'. I am not fit to give my opinion : I 
 see it is likely to be a dreadful time, but 
 
 H 5 
 
154 
 
 what you resolve shall determine me ; be- 
 cause, as T have undertaken the charge of 
 your house, your measures make staying 
 my duty or not my duty. So you are not to 
 ask my opinion, but to direct me vv^hat to do. 
 
 1st, B. Well, but if you were not under 
 the obligation you speak of, child, which 
 you may be sure we would be far from 
 tying you to in such a case as this, what 
 would you do then ? 
 
 S. Why then I should properly belong 
 to my mother's family, and I ought to go thi- 
 ther, and then to act as she should direct. 
 
 2d. B. But, tell us what you think of 
 doing now, child. 
 
 S. You may assure yourself I will do 
 just as you do : I will live and die with you. 
 
 1st. B. This is all nothing : what w^e do 
 we must do quickly, there is no time for 
 long consultations. If w^e intend to go 
 away, it must be speedily ; or nobody will 
 receive us : nay, we may carry the plague 
 with us, and do ourselves more hurt than 
 good. 
 
155 
 
 2d. B. Nay, all the ^Yorld almost, that 
 have an)^^here to go, are gone already. But 
 have you thought of any place where to go? 
 
 \st. B. Xo, not I. 
 
 8. Why, brother, have you made no 
 provision for the time of distress '? 
 
 \st. B. No, not I, neither for soul nor 
 body ! — Here he sighed and wept : but 
 proceeded ; Indeed, sister, you have been in 
 the right all along, and my mother too. I 
 have put this evil day off, and flattered 
 myself it would never come. I have seen 
 such things frequently in Italy, and after 
 the first frights the distemper has vanished 
 ao^ain. I was indeed alarmed when I came 
 to you there in April, but I found there 
 were some people, who I thought made 
 worse of it than they needed to do ; and I 
 dropt all concern about it. Nor have I 
 suffered any impressions to be made on me 
 since. 
 
 aS'. I took it otherwise, brother, and I 
 always thought it was another way ; that 
 you were fortified by your extraordinary 
 
156 
 
 experiences of God's goodness, and your 
 faith in him : and that I knew was a good 
 and justifiable foundation on which to be 
 easy and settled in your mind. 
 
 \st. B. No, no : I am quite unprepared ; 
 and that with this aggravation, that I have 
 neglected and slighted all the warnings of 
 its approach : and now it comes on like an 
 overflowing flood, nothing can stand in its 
 way ; we shall see the city in a very Uttle 
 time more a mere general grave for all its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 2d. B. Not all, I hope, brother. 
 
 1st. B. Truly I believe there will very 
 few remain of those that stay here : they 
 that fly in time may indeed be preserved. 
 
 2d. B. Well, brother, we are all to be 
 directed by you : what shall we do ? 
 
 l5^. i?. Do ? I have nothing to say to 
 you but this. Do not follow my dreadful 
 example, to put ofl" repentance and prepar- 
 ation upon a wild presumption of escaping 
 the danger ; or indeed of its being more 
 favourable than it is likely to be : lose not 
 
157 
 
 an hour, not a moment : 1 have lost all my 
 time, and now, heaven is just ! I not only 
 have no time for it, but I have no temper 
 for it : when the danger is at the door 
 there is no beginning the work ; it is too 
 late then. 
 
 2d. B. Compose your mind, brother, 
 and look up to heaven for direction ; and, 
 if you think of going anywhere into the 
 country for your safety, my sister and I 
 will remain here to look to the house, and 
 preserve things. 
 
 \st. B. No, brother, I will not go away 
 for my own safety, and leave you exposed 
 to the danger. 
 
 2d. B. I hope it may please God to pre- 
 serve us ; but if not, we are in the way of 
 our duty, and may with the more cheerful- 
 ness cast ourselves into his arms. 
 
 1st. B. You talk very differently, bro- 
 ther, from your discourse a few months ago. 
 
 2d. B. I have had long experience of 
 things since that ; and particularly have 
 felt the right He has to dispose of me and 
 
158 
 
 all that belongs to me : it is my part to 
 submit, it is his part to do whatsoever he 
 pleases. 
 
 1st. B. I want such a spirit, brother : 
 how did you get it ? 
 
 2d. B. There is the dear instructor, that 
 has been the healing angel to me. 
 
 8. I entreat you, brother, do not dis- 
 courage yourself so ; I have been capable 
 of nothing, and have done nothing, neither 
 can any of us do anything. 
 
 \st. B. Well, brother, you came in since 
 I did, what do you hear of the main 
 thino; ? what condition are we in ? 
 
 2d. B. Worse and worse, the plague 
 advances this way still, in a most surprising 
 manner. 
 
 \st. B. Well, what shall we do ? 
 
 2d. B. I scarcely know what. 
 
 1^^. B. In short, there is hardly any 
 body left in the city, but in by-places, and 
 where people either have had no time to go, 
 as has been our case, or have resolved to 
 stay. 
 
159 
 
 2d. B. Let us see a little further, bro- 
 ther : there are but very few dead in the 
 city yet ; I think not above fifty or sixty in 
 all. 
 
 " This discourse being ended, the youn- 
 ger brother and sister began to consider 
 that it would be their lot to stay in the 
 city : but, being very anxious for their 
 elder brother, they resolved to persuade 
 him to go away, chiefly with respect to 
 the confusion they found he was in about 
 his eternal state. In the mean time, as 
 they kept up their daily conferences and 
 their fasts as before, they were everv day 
 more and more encouraged and comforted, 
 being fully given up to the disposing will 
 of heaven, let it be which way it would, 
 w^hether for life or death. 
 
 '' But to bring them to this gradually, 
 we must go back to another of their 
 discourses on this subject in one of their 
 retirements. The brother began the con- 
 ference upon the subject of the last dis- 
 course thus. 
 
160 
 
 B. Dear sister, I thought we brought 
 our last discourse to a very happy point : 
 namely, That, after self-examination, 
 searching and trying our ways, we should 
 turn to the Lord. I have had some diffi- 
 culties with myself upon this work of turn- 
 ing to God. We resolved it at our last 
 meeting into repentance ; and I think that 
 is plain in the text we were upon ; turn 
 with fasting and weeping and mourning. 
 This I take to be repentance : but is there 
 nothing to do beside ? Alas ! we may 
 weep and mourn, but, as that can make no 
 compensation for our sin, we must look 
 further. 
 
 S. It is very true there is more to be 
 done ; but this scripture is plain even in 
 that, for the words turn to the Lord, imply, 
 in my judgment, flying to him for pardon. 
 It is true, that the manner of applying to 
 God for pardon of our sins is not expressed 
 in the prophecy of Joel ; because they 
 were then under the Old Testament dis- 
 pensation. 
 
161 
 
 B. That is what my thoughts resolved 
 it into. But now, sister, I bring it to 
 the New Testament ; and I was directed, 
 I hope, to that scripture. Acts xvi. 30, 
 wdiere the gaoler says. Sirs, ivhat must I do 
 to be saved ? The very w^ords were upon 
 my mind before the particular scripture 
 occurred to my thoughts, What must I 
 do to he saved ? and the answer is direct, 
 V. 31 : And they said, Believe on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and thou shalt he saved, and 
 thy house. 
 
 S. It is most certain, brother, that to 
 our repentance, which we have been called 
 to by the text w^hich we discoursed of last, 
 must be joined the gospel direction of 
 believing on the Lord Jesus Christ : and 
 that is the next point for us to examine 
 ourselves about. 
 
 B. It is plain, sister, from another 
 text. Acts XX. 21 : Repentance toicards God, 
 and faith toicards our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 S. Dear brother, if we have but these, 
 our preparations are complete. 
 
162 
 
 B. Then we may say, Come, Lord 
 Jesus, come quickly ! 
 
 S. The next question then is to be 
 assured on these two points. 
 
 B. Dear sister, I have nothing for it 
 but the example of the man, in the gospel, 
 Mark ix. 24, Lord, I believe, help thou my 
 unbelief ! and this is the full exercise of my 
 soul ; this it is to which I desire to dedicate 
 the whole remainder of my time, be it little 
 or much, to obtain a settled dependence 
 upon the merits and purchase of Christ the 
 blessed Saviour of the world. 
 
 S. There is no other comfortable hope, 
 no other rock, no anchor for the soul, but 
 this : He is the hope of his people, and 
 their saviour in the time of trouble. — This 
 is a time of trouble : let us not be anxious, 
 whether we are spared or not in this time 
 of trouble ; that faith, which has carried 
 others through the fire and through the 
 water, will carry us through the fire of a 
 disease. What is it to die by this infectious 
 fever, or, being spared a few years more. 
 
163 
 
 to be carried away by another, or by any 
 grievous distemper ? 
 
 B, The difference is nothing, if it be 
 not in things beyond the grave : for the 
 difference of the time here is so little that 
 it is not worth naming. At least when w^e 
 come into that state we shall esteem it 
 nothing. 
 
 S. Let us then neither wish nor fear in 
 the present desolation, but be entirely 
 resigned, gi\^ng up ourselves to him, w^ho 
 has said he careth for us, and has bid us 
 be careful for nothing. This w^ill be a 
 comfortable state indeed. 
 
 B. Dear sister, I have been debating 
 long with myself about the comfort of our 
 faith, and about a comfortable dependence ; 
 and I have been long questioning whether 
 ever I may arrive to the comfort of it or 
 not ; whether the joy and peace of believing 
 may ever be my lot : and I have some 
 reason to believe it W'ill not: 
 
 /S. I hope for you that it may : pray do 
 not foreclose yourself. 
 
164 
 
 B. I have such a weight upon me for 
 a long series of folly and wickedness, that, 
 the more I search and try my ways, the 
 more I see reason to turn to the Lord ivith 
 weeping and with mourning, and I believe 
 I shall go so to my grave. 
 
 S. It may be so : but let me add, that 
 it does not follow but you may go so to 
 heaven ; and then all those tears shall be 
 wiped away from your eyes. 
 
 B. I have sometimes brought it to this 
 conclusion, (and blessed be God for it,) 
 that, though repentance and faith be abso- 
 lutely necessary to our salvation, yet com- 
 fort and assurance are not : and then I 
 remember the words of Job, Though he 
 slay me, yet ivill I trust in him. 
 
 S. This faith is as effectual, though not 
 so comfortable, as the other. This is my 
 case : I know he is able to help and to save 
 to the uttermost, and I desire to lie at his 
 feet, and say, as the apostle did. Whither 
 else shall we go ? 
 
 B. If my faith will support itself thus 
 
165 
 
 far, that I can lie down and die at his feet, 
 I will not say it is all I can desire, but I 
 do say it is all I can expect ; ^ and it is just 
 with him if he should deny me even that. 
 
 S. We cannot promise or propose to 
 ourselves what we shall do when we come 
 to the extremity. Dear brother, this is 
 such a time of trial as we never had before ; 
 nor older people than we. It pleases God 
 we are yet alive ; but death is at the door, 
 and we have reason to expect it every 
 moment ; and that a terrible death too : 
 nothing can stand us in stead, but an 
 entire dependence upon infinite mercy, 
 through the merits of Jesus Christ. 
 
 B. I propose nothing to myself, but to 
 depend upon him, and to look to him for 
 life ; for he is the Author of eternal salva- 
 tion to all that believe on him,'^ and I rest 
 
 ' And more than might be reasonably expected : but yet 
 less than may and ought to be confidently looked for, consider- 
 ing the rich, and free, and full promises of the gospel, even to 
 "the chief of sinners" truly coming to Christ. 
 
 2 " To all them that obetj him : to*? 'viraKovovaiv." Qur 
 author has here gone a little heijond the letter of the text in 
 insisting on faith alone. 
 
166 
 
 on him, and this is all my preparation for 
 this dreadful time. 
 
 S. I know no other preparation ; and 
 I trust that this preparation will carry us 
 through w^hatever it shall please God to 
 suffer us to meet with, in this dreadful time 
 that is upon us. 
 
 '* For some time both before and after 
 this discourse, the plague violently in- 
 creasing, their elder brother had been very 
 pressing v;ith them to leave the town, and 
 shift all for themselves. But these two 
 well-prepared souls seemed to receive that 
 part of his proposals coldly, and began to 
 look upon themselves as destined to stay, 
 seeing their brother, by whose motions, as 
 the head of the family, they had resolved 
 from the first to be guided, had not talked 
 of going away till it was almost imprac- 
 ticable to be done. They had made no 
 provision, either for leaving the house and 
 family in trust with any body, or for 
 securing what in such cases might be, and 
 
167 
 was fit to be secured : nor any country 
 situation to retreat to. The elder brother, 
 indeed, had a house of his own, and an 
 estate with it, as far off as Cheshire ; but 
 it was not possible to carry any thing of 
 goods or necessaries so far ; especially after 
 they had so neglected it to the last, till the 
 ordinary carriers had ceased going for some 
 time, and when there was no passing on the 
 roads. The towns were all guarded, and 
 the passages stopped. Even if they had 
 procured certificates of health from the 
 Lord Mayor, yet the city began to be so 
 infected that no one would receive them ; 
 no inn would lodge them on the way. 
 These things had made their removal so 
 impracticable, that, as I said, the second 
 brother and his sister concluded they were 
 to stay. 
 
 " They were, as above described, come 
 to a happy and steady calm of mind with 
 respect to the danger of death — going 
 together twice every day, besides their pri- 
 vate retirements, to commit their souls in 
 
168 
 
 a more solemn manner into the hands of 
 God. Hitherto the infection had been kept 
 not only out of their house hut out of 
 their neighbourhood : no one had died or 
 been infected, that they had heard of, in 
 that part of the street where they lived : 
 but, as it was now the latter end of July, 
 the city seemed like a place invested and 
 besieged ; for, though the plague was not 
 so violent within the walls as without, yet 
 it was more or less in most parts of the city. 
 
 *' For some time past the dead had 
 ceased to be buried in the usual form ; and 
 in the out-parts the dead carts were ap- 
 pointed to go through the streets between 
 the hours of twelve and three in the night. 
 — It was not until the first week in August, 
 that the dreadful sound, ' Bring out your 
 dead,' was heard within the city ; and at 
 first it was principally in those parishes 
 which were next the walls, on the side of 
 Cripplegate and Bishopgate ; and that week 
 there died of all diseases above 4000. 
 
 '' Their elder brother, came in the week 
 
169 
 
 before this, in a very great concern, having 
 been at the Customhouse or that way, 
 where he had some warehouses of goods, 
 and having met with some frightful things 
 in his way. Finding his brother and sister 
 together, he broke out in a tone rather of 
 horror than anger. 
 
 1st. B. Well, brother, said he, my 
 sister and you may do what you please, 
 but I can stand it no longer. 
 
 2d. B. My sister and I too are willing 
 to do whatever you direct, brother ; but it 
 has been left among us as a thing unde- 
 termined so long, that I do not see what 
 can be done now. 
 
 S. There may be as much danger, 
 brother, in going as in staying ; for I be- 
 lieve you have not yet resolved whither 
 to go. 
 
 \st. B. It is true I have not: I have 
 done by my family as I have done by my 
 soul ; let it lie without any concern about 
 it till it is too late. 
 
 S. I beseech you do not say so : your 
 I 
 
170 
 
 family, indeed, may find it too late to stir, 
 but, blessed be the Lord, your soul is in 
 better hands. 
 
 1st. B. I scarce know what hands I 
 am in ; I am at my wits' ends ; I will take 
 my horse and go to Cheshire. 
 
 S. That is giving us your order to stay 
 w^here we are ; for you know we cannot 
 travel so far, as circumstances now stand, 
 unless we should resolve to lie in the fields 
 and starve ; for no one would take us in. 
 
 1st B. Why not? you may have certi- 
 ficates of health from my Lord Mayor. 
 
 2d. B. You have seen accounts, bro- 
 ther, of several families who have been put 
 to all manner of distresses upon the roads, 
 on this very account ; and some have come 
 back again to London, choosing to meet 
 the w^orst in their own houses, rather than 
 wander in the fields and roads, when no 
 one will admit them, or come near them, 
 or let them pass from place to place. 
 
 1st. B. I know not what to do : I must 
 go somewhere : I am not able to stay here : 
 
171 
 
 my very blood runs cold in my veins at 
 what I have met with to-day. 
 
 S. Why will you go out into the streets, 
 brother ? 
 
 1st. B. Nay, I do not think to go any 
 more, till I go away for good and all. 
 
 M. B. Hitherto, brother, we have been 
 kept : who knows but it may please God 
 to spare us ? Let us keep vvithin doors. 
 
 1^^. B. How shall we get provisions ? 
 My mother's servant, that furnishes us now, 
 said the last time he came he was frighted 
 as he came through the Borough, and 
 should be afraid to come much longer. 
 
 *' While they were under these debates, 
 which held them three or four days, there 
 came a captain of a ship to the house, of 
 whose ship the brothers were owners, and 
 had fitted it out for a voyage to Genoa and 
 Messina, where their chief dealing lay, and 
 where they had lived. They were upon 
 one of these discourses it seems, when this 
 captain came into the counting-house for 
 I 2 
 
172 
 
 some despatches which he wanted. Here 
 he found his chief merchant under great 
 perplexity about the progress of the plague ; 
 and began to tell him, that he wondered he 
 had not removed his family before this time : 
 upon which the following discourse began 
 between those two only — for the second 
 brother was gone up stairs with his sister. 
 
 Captain. Sir, I perceive you are in some 
 perplexity about your family in this dreadful 
 time. 
 
 Merchant. Indeed, captain, so I am : 
 my brother and sister too, who are our 
 governors, would have had me remove into 
 the country two months ago ; and I 
 laughed at them, and slighted it : but 
 now 1 must own I wish with all my 
 heart I had done it. 
 
 C. I warrant you told them how you 
 used to do abroad, where they make Hght 
 of such things, they are so frequent. 
 
 M. So I did indeed : and I told my 
 l)rother I thought he had known better, 
 that had lived at Naples, where they say 
 
173 
 
 there died 20,000 in one day ; though, by 
 the way, it was not true. 
 
 O. But pray, sir, why do you not go 
 away still ? This side of the city, and the 
 Rotherhithe side of the river are pretty 
 clear yet : you may all go away that way. 
 
 M. You mistake the case extremely, 
 captain : we may go out of the tow^n several 
 ways still, but there is not a town upon the 
 road that will suffer any body to pass that 
 comes from London, or from any town 
 near London ; so that it is impossible to 
 travel : we must even stay all and die here : 
 I see no remedy. 
 
 The captain remaining silent, and seem- 
 ing to muse on somewhat, the merchant 
 proceeded : What makes you turn sur- 
 prised at that, captain ? it cannot be won- 
 dered at, nor can we blame the people ; 
 for who would venture to lodge a family 
 from London ? I mean what inn would 
 venture it, and have the plague brought to 
 them? 
 
 C. 1 was not surprised at that part at 
 I 3 
 
174 
 
 all; indeed I was not thinking of it, I 
 was at first surprised to think that you, 
 sir, who had so much knowledge of these 
 things, should not have made preparations 
 for your family's retreat a great while ago, 
 before the plague came : for you have had 
 notice that it was coming on above these 
 six months. 
 
 M. O captain ! wonder no more : we 
 have done by the family as we do by our 
 souls-^-put off the apprehensions, and that 
 puts off the preparations ; and now the evil 
 is upon us, we are all in confusion. 
 
 C. Well, but neither was that what I 
 paused at : I have a proposal in my 
 thoughts, that you may, if you please, 
 with God's blessing, convey your family 
 out of the city still, and that to such a 
 distance that you may at least hope to be 
 safe : and you shall meet with no stops 
 upon the road at all, though you travel a 
 great way. 
 
 M. We shall all be greatly obliged to 
 you for such a proposal : nothing can be 
 
175 
 
 more acceptable at a time of such extremity ; 
 for we look upon ourselves as all dead 
 bodies. 
 
 C. I have but one question to ask by 
 way of caution, and if that cannot be an- 
 swered, I can do nothing. 
 
 M. I believe I can guess at your ques- 
 tion : the nature of the thing guides to it : 
 it is, Whether we have not the distemper 
 already among us ? 
 
 C. That is the question indeed, sir; 
 for, if that could not be answered, you 
 know nobody could expect to be assisted : 
 neither could any body assist them ; for 
 they would carry death with them wherever 
 they should go. 
 
 M. Well, you may be assured and de- 
 pend upon it, that we are all of us, blessed 
 be God ! servants and all, as free from the 
 infection, and from any distemper, at pre- 
 sent, as ever we were in our lives. 
 
 C. Why then, sir, the short of the 
 story is this : Have not I a ship here in the 
 river? and is not she your own ? except a 
 
176 
 
 sixteenth, which I have by your friendship, 
 and a sixteenth of my brother's, who will 
 consent to whatever shall be for your ser- 
 vice. Here we have victuals for her, for 
 four months, for twenty-two men ; and 
 have put her up on the Exchange for 
 Genoa, Naples, and Messina ; but we have 
 taken in no goods, but some hogsheads 
 of sugar for your own account, and about 
 fifty fodder of lead, for ballast, also of your 
 own : nor, as things are now, will any body 
 ship any thing ; for all trade is at a stand. 
 Besides it is to no purpose to go to sea, for 
 no nation in Europe will give us product, 
 or let us so much as come to an anchor in 
 any of their ports. 
 
 M. You put a new thought into my 
 head, I confess. Why, captain, would you 
 take us on board ? 
 
 C. Will I take you on board ? Is she 
 not your own ship ? is she not fitted out at 
 your expense ? You may and have a right 
 to command her, and turn me a-shore, if 
 you think fit. 
 
177 
 
 M. Well ; but are you willing to take 
 us in ? 
 
 C. How can you ask that question, 
 sir ? why else do I make the proposal ? 
 
 M. "Where does your ship lie now ? 
 
 C. She did lie, sir, at Rotherhithe, in 
 what they call Cherry-garden Hole ; but you 
 know you ordered me to fall down to Dept- 
 ford ; and there we ride, ready to fall down 
 lower, if we see occasion. 
 
 M. And have you room for us all ? 
 
 C. Sir, we will make room for you, as 
 convenient as if it were in your own house. 
 
 M. Sit down again, captain : come, I 
 will propose it to my brother and sister, 
 and hear what they say to it ; for I confess 
 your offer comes to me as if it came from 
 heaven. It is as if it was a voice from 
 above, a message to save us all from the 
 most dreadful condition that ever family 
 was in. I wonder I should never have 
 thought of it before." 
 
 The account goes on to relate the pro- 
 
178 
 
 posal of the measure to the younger brother 
 and the sister, who both regarded it as 
 '' something like a call from heaven to 
 them to come out of the danger ; " and, 
 viewing it in that light, " received it with 
 suitable acknowledgments, and closed wil- 
 lingly with the offer." 
 
 Accordingly, under the direction of the 
 elder brother, and by the active exertions 
 of the captain, every requisite preparation 
 for the embarkation was quickly made, 
 and the ship's boat " ordered to come up 
 to Tower Wharf for the family on the Wed- 
 nesday : " when lo ! on the Sunday after- 
 noon the sister was suddenly taken ill. No 
 doubt was entertained that she was seized 
 with the plague. Under these trying cir- 
 cumstances ** she carried it with an extraor- 
 dinary composure of mind, meekly com- 
 mitting herself into the hands of Him on 
 whose mercy she had so long depended ; 
 and strikingly shewing the difference be- 
 tween a mind solemnly prepared for death, 
 and which in earnest had long expected it ; 
 
179 
 
 and a thoughtless negligent one, which had 
 put far away the evil day.'' But the con- 
 dition of the elder brother was widely differ- 
 ent. "Now indeed he was thoroughly 
 distressed. Before he w^as frighted at the 
 danger to which he was exposed : but now 
 he looked upon it that God had struck his 
 family, and that they should all die of the 
 plague, and that very quickly. He got no 
 sleep that night. Between twelve and one 
 o'clock, he heard for the first time that dismal 
 cry, ' Bring out your dead ! bring out your 
 dead ! ' the cart beginning to go through the 
 street where he lived that very night. The 
 noise of the bell, the doleful cry of the bell- 
 man, and the rumbling of the cart wheels, you 
 may suppose, joined together to present to 
 his mind the most frightful images; the 
 terror of which was increased by the appre- 
 hension that the plague was already in his 
 house, and that his own sister might per- 
 haps be to be fetched out by the cart and 
 the bearers, the next night or two at furthest. 
 He got up and went to his brother's cham- 
 
180 
 
 ber, thinking to awaken him, and to sit 
 down by his bedside. But he was sur- 
 prised to find no body in the room, and 
 that the bed was not unmade. In short, 
 his brother was up praying with his sister ; 
 and, though he believed she had the plague 
 upon her, yet he would not leave her or 
 stir from her, but as necessity obliged him ; 
 but sat by her, comforting and supporting 
 her mind, with the fruit of their former 
 experiences, and reading consoling scrip- 
 tures to her. Thus they were spending the 
 night, when, the elder brother calling the 
 younger by name, the servant that attended 
 told him, and he went out to him ; and 
 their short and confused discourse was to 
 this purpose. 
 
 1st. B. O brother ! we are all dead 
 corpses ! There is a cart gone by that 
 must fetch us all away. 
 
 2nd. B. What, is the dead cart come 
 into our lane ? 
 
 \st. B. Ay, ay, I heard the bell- man's 
 dismal cry. 
 
181 
 
 2nd. B. Well, God's will be done with 
 us ! let us settle our minds on him : He 
 shall not be afraid of evil tidings, whose 
 heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. 
 
 \st. B. How can you go into my sis- 
 ter's chamber ? you will get the distemper, 
 to be sure. Xay, have you not got it 
 already ? 
 
 2nd. B. I cannot tell how I may fare 
 as to that ; it shall be as God pleases : but 
 I will not leave her, while she has life and 
 sense in her : she has been my soul's com- 
 forter, and I will never cease comforting 
 her, as long as I am able. 
 
 \st. B. Why you are strangely altered 
 and comforted indeed, compared to what 
 you were when you came into the Count- 
 ing-house to me, and were for running 
 away to France. 
 
 2nd. B. Blessed be God, I am altered : 
 and blessed be that dear messenger of God 
 that is now languishing, and just entering 
 joyfully into heaven ! She has been a thou- 
 sand times dearer than a sister to me ; she 
 
182 
 
 has been an angel of God to me. Oh that 
 I were in her condition^ as to the soul, 
 though I were in her condition as to the 
 infection also ! As to the last, that is the 
 particular hand of God, and it is our duty 
 to submit : blessed be God it is no token 
 of his displeasure ! 
 
 1st. B. How ! brother, is it no mark of 
 God's displeasure ? I think it is a sore and 
 heavy judgment, and a token of God's 
 vengeance upon the land. 
 
 2nd. B. It is a national judgment, no 
 doubt, and calls for national humiliation ; 
 but I do not think it must be called a token 
 of God's vindictive hand to any particular 
 person ; for then no body that had the dis- 
 temper, could have any hope of being at 
 peace with God : and there is our dear 
 sister, bad as she is, she has a triumphant 
 joy possessing her whole soul, in the blessed 
 assurance of her salvation.^ 
 
 ' "It was generally observed among us, that God's people, 
 who died by the plague among the rest, died with such peace 
 and comfort as Christians do not ordinarily arrive unto, except 
 when they are called forth to suffer martyrdom for the testi- 
 
183 
 
 1*"^. B. I am glad to hear it : but I 
 am very apt to question those who boast of 
 their assurances of heaven : I think they 
 very often prove hypocrites.^ 
 
 mony of Jesus Christ. Some who have been full of doubts 
 and fears, and complaints, whilst they have lived and been 
 well, have been filled with assurance, and comfort, and praise, 
 and joyful expectation of glory, when they have lain on their 
 death -beds by this disease. And not only more grown Chris- 
 tians, who have been more ripe for glory, have had these 
 comforts, but also some younger Christians, whose acquaint- 
 ance with the Lord had been of no long standing." Vincent ; 
 God's Terrible Voice in the City, p. 37. 
 
 ^ The common class of mere nominal Christians very natu- 
 rally form such an opinion. They can conceive little or nothing 
 of the grounds — of any reasonable grounds — why one professed 
 Christian, more than another of good and respectable cha- 
 racter, should entertain such an assurance. They conceive 
 that it must be taken up on some enthusiastic and inexplicable 
 assumption. But it is by no means so. The reasonableness of 
 the thing may be perfectly well demonstrated. All indeed pro- 
 ceeds upon the sole basis of Scripture : nothing can be known 
 concerning salvation in general, much less concerning our own 
 salvation, but from that source. But, admitting the infallible 
 truth of the Scriptures, we ask, Is any thing more obvious than 
 that they describe, minutely and particularly, various things 
 pertaining to the character and state of mind, which mark out 
 them that are in the way to heaven — " them that shall be the 
 heirs of salvation?" I refer to all the descriptions of repent- 
 ance, of the exercise of faith in Christ, of " the new heart and 
 the right spirit," of the love of God and the " love to the bre- 
 thren," which mark out them that " have passed from death 
 
184 
 
 2d. B. She is too near heaven to he a 
 counterfeit, hrother. Besides she is the 
 humhlest, most melted penitent that ever 
 you heard of: the sense of God's pardoning 
 mercy has melted her very soul into peni- 
 tential tears, and those tears have filled her 
 with joy. 
 
 1st. B. You talk upon contraries : you 
 are all mysterious. 
 
 2d. B. You may call it mysterious, if 
 
 unto life ; " of the Christian temper, and conduct, and princi- 
 ples ; of the " fruits of the Spirit," which distinguish " them 
 that are Christ's." Now is it not perfectly intelligible that a 
 person seriously-minded, bending his chief attention to these 
 momentous subjects, may discern that, through the grace of 
 God, he is brought, notwithstanding all remaining imperfec- 
 tions, to possess this state of mind, to exercise these Christian 
 graces, and to bear this character ? And may he not hence, 
 ■with the most perfect fairness and reasonableness infer, on 
 Scriptural grounds, that " God hath not appointed him unto 
 wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ? " 
 Thus the Spirit of God " bears witness with his spirit that he 
 is a child of God : " and, in proportion as that Divine Agent 
 shines with his glorious light upon his own work in the soul, 
 all doubt vanishes, and the happy subject of it is " filled with 
 all joy and peace in believing." This indeed is *' the secret of 
 the Lord, known (only) to them that fear him:" (Ps.xxv.14: ) 
 but it is no unintelligible, or inexplicable, or unreasonable 
 fancy : it is no unfounded presumption. 
 
185 
 
 you will, but it is a blessed truth, though 
 it is a mysterious thing to those that under- 
 stand it not : no repentance, no humility, 
 no tears like those that are raised by a 
 humble sense of infinite, undeserved, for- 
 giving grace : and no joy, no satisfaction 
 of soul, no rejoicing, nay, triumph of soul, 
 like the joy that is founded in sorrow, 
 founded in repentance. (Ezek. xvi. 63.) 
 
 1st. B. And is my sister come to that 
 length ? These are sublime things indeed. — 
 O brother, what have I been doing ? I am 
 undone : what shall I do ? 
 
 2<i. B. I see, brother, it has pleased 
 God to visit the family : I hope you w411 be 
 preserved ; I beg of you to take boat, and go 
 immediately on board the ship. Take such 
 servants as you think fit, and your little 
 children, and go away ; for you w^ill but 
 finish the ruin of the family if you stay : 
 for if you should be struck they are all 
 undone. 
 
 \st. B. I cannot go without you, bro- 
 ther : if you will go with me I will go. 
 
186 
 
 2d. B. Do not ask me : I cannot leave 
 her : no, I will live and die with her. I 
 am sure, if I had been the first, she would 
 not have left me. Besides, brother, it may 
 not be safe for you to have me go, for to 
 be sure I have the seeds of the distemper 
 about me by this time. 
 
 *' He had with much ado prevailed on 
 his brother, to resolve upon going the next 
 morning, and not to stay for the ship's 
 boat, which was to come for them two days 
 after ; when, offering to go into his sister's 
 chamber again, the servant met him softly 
 at the door, and told him she was fallen 
 into a sleep, with a little perspiration upon 
 her. On this he retired into his own cham- 
 ber. He waited four or five hours, and still 
 his sister slept most sweetly : upon which 
 he lay down on his own bed in his clothes, 
 and slept several hours more, and still his 
 sister had not awaked. In a word, she 
 slept till near nine o'clock the next morn- 
 ing, when she awoke wonderfully refreshed ; 
 her distemper quite abated, the fever gone ; 
 
187 
 
 and, in a word, it appeared, to the inexpres- 
 sible joy of the whole family, that she had 
 not the least symptoms of the infection 
 upon her. 
 
 " On the day appointed the boat there- 
 fore came up, and the eldest brother, with 
 his two children and one maid-servant, and 
 a man-servant, w^ent on foot through the 
 street to Galley-Quay, where, it being high 
 water, the boat came close to the shore, 
 and they all went awav. 
 
 " The next day, the boat being ordered 
 up again, the second brother, the sister, 
 and another maid-servant, with an ancient 
 woman that was formerly the sister's nurse, 
 all went off in the same manner. 
 
 '* When they w^re all safe on board, the 
 captain asked their leave to bring his own 
 w^ife and one child, a little boy of live years 
 old, and a maid, to be w4th him also ; 
 which they all willingly agreed to : and thus 
 they were all embarked together. This was 
 the first week in August, by which time the 
 burials in the citv and suburbs amounted to 
 
188 
 
 no less than 4,030 in all, of which 2,817 
 were of the plague. 
 
 " They left the house fastened up with 
 no soul in it ; but committed the care of 
 guarding it to the ordinary watch by night, 
 and to two poor men, who by turns kept 
 the outer door, by day, took in letters, and 
 any such business as, in that time of a 
 cessation of all business, might happen. 
 They were particularly directed to take in 
 the weekly bills of mortality, which with 
 all foreign letters were ordered to be sent 
 weekly to a house at Greenwich, and to be 
 thence brought to the ship's side, after they 
 had been perfumed and sprinkled with 
 vinegar, and then scorched at the fire, as 
 was the usage. 
 
 *' The ship, which was large and com- 
 modious, lay at anchor a little above Dept- 
 ford ; where they continued about a fort- 
 night longer : but, finding by that time the 
 dreadful increase of the plague, and that it 
 came fast to the eastward, and began to 
 rage in Wapping and Ratcliffe, and even 
 
189 
 
 down to Blackwall; and that some had 
 died of it at Rotherhithe and Deptford ; 
 the captain, at the request of his company, 
 weighed, and fell down the river to a place 
 between Blackwall and Woolwich, called 
 Bugsby's Hole, a secure station for ships 
 to ride in. They soon found reason also 
 to alter the place appointed for their letters, 
 and ordered them to Woolwich — both the 
 towns of Deptford and Greenwich being 
 sorely visited. 
 
 " In this station they rode with great 
 satisfaction all the rest of the month of 
 August ; till they received the last weekly 
 bill for that month, which amounted to no 
 less than 7,496— an increase of 2000 upon 
 that of the preceding week ; when the elder 
 brother became altogether as uneasy as he 
 was before he left his house in London. 
 On this they weighed, and went down the 
 river to Greenhithe. Thence they proposed 
 to go down as low as Gravesend ; when 
 they received news that the plague was at 
 that place, and, as it was said, (though 
 
190 
 
 prematurely,) at Chatham and Rochester. 
 They continued therefore somewhat longer 
 at Greenhithe ; till the elder brother being 
 still uneasy, and not bearing to lie at any 
 place when the plague was yet beyond him 
 — or lower down the river — made the cap- 
 tain remove past Gravesend to an anchorage 
 at a place since called New Tavern— being 
 as far as the customhouse officers would let 
 him pass without clearing." 
 
 Finding however that they were too much 
 exposed in this situation to be safe with the 
 small number of hands they had on board 
 to manage the ship, (being only " the chief- 
 mate, boatswain, carpenter, and six sea- 
 men," beside the captain,) " they agreed at 
 last to come up the river again to the upper 
 part of Long Reach — three miles nearer 
 London than Greenhithe. Here lay six 
 other vessels, four above them and two 
 below them : which they found were all 
 outward-bound, but without their full lad- 
 ing, being embargoed, as it were, by the 
 common calamity. All the captains had 
 
191 
 
 their families on board, and most of them 
 other families, who thus sought, like the 
 subjects of our narrative, safety from the 
 plague ; and through God's mercy, had 
 hitherto found it. Our party had not been 
 here above three days, when the headmost 
 ship, or that which lay at the upper end of 
 the Reach, made a signal to the rest, which 
 they answered, but the new comers did not 
 understand. The headmost ship's boat 
 however soon came along side, with the 
 ship's mate on board, and having hailed the 
 captain said, he was ordered to acquaint 
 him, that the next day was that which the 
 six ships, ever since they had ridden there 
 in company, had agreed to keep as a weekly 
 fast, in order to beg of Almighty God to 
 preserve them from the pestilence ; and that 
 they would be glad if he and his company 
 would please to join them in it. This pro- 
 posal was thankfully acceded to, and the 
 day regularly observed, on its weekly re- 
 turn, as a day of strict religious fasting 
 and humiliation. As however they had no 
 
192 
 
 minister on board, they made it an act of 
 private and, as we may call it, family devo- 
 tion only. The younger brother and his 
 sister spent much of the time together in 
 joint religious exercises, as they had done 
 on their usual fasts : but ' ' the elder bro- 
 ther was still so confused in his thoughts, 
 and had such a reserved melancholy upon 
 him all the time, that he could do little 
 more than read a sermon or two to the 
 family, and then retired to his private 
 cabin, where he spent his time as well as 
 he could ; though, as he afterwards ac- 
 knowledged, very uncomfortably to him- 
 self. 
 
 ** About three days after this, which was 
 September 6, they received the weekly bill 
 of mortality, reporting 8,252 deaths from 
 August 29 to September 5, whereof 7,145 
 were of the plague and spotted fever. This 
 filled them all with heaviness ; and put the 
 elder brother upon new^ projects : especially 
 as the numbers were nearly as high the two 
 following weeks. However on the 29th of 
 
193 
 
 September they were surprised early in the 
 morning by hearing the headmost ship fire 
 live guns ; and, looking out, they saw she 
 had her ancient and pendants flying, and 
 all bore the face of joy. They began to 
 call upon one another with their speaking 
 trumpets, to enquire the cause : when, 
 presently a boat proceeded from the head 
 ship, and, calling to every one of the others 
 as she passed, informed them that her cap- 
 tain had received the last weekly bill and two 
 letters, which announced that the plague 
 had abated in an extraordinary manner, the 
 number having fallen by 2,000 that week ! 
 This was matter of joy sufficient to them 
 all : and accordingly they all fired their 
 guns, gave thanks to God, and drank to 
 one another's health as well as they could 
 at that distance ; (for they never ventured 
 on board each others' ships ;) and, in hopes 
 that the distemper would continue to abate, 
 laid aside the scheme they had begun to 
 entertain, of sailing away together, and 
 forcing a landing in Ireland, or some other 
 
 K 
 
194 
 
 uninfected part. Nor did their hopes de- 
 ceive them," as will appear from comparing 
 the account already given in the former 
 part of this volume. 
 
 However they continued strictly on their 
 guard till the end of November. In the 
 course of that month, the face of things 
 being so essentially changed, they came up 
 to " what they now call Limehouse Reach, a 
 little above Deptford." Thence they sent 
 their servants to town to prepare their 
 house for their reception ; and, '* after 
 almost four months' absence, all things 
 being ready within doors, and the whole 
 parish of St. Margaret Pattens, in which 
 their house stood, having been several 
 weeks free from the plague," they returned 
 through God's blessing upon the measure 
 they had been led to adopt, in health and 
 safety to their habitation. 
 
 Our author concludes his work with re- 
 marking again on the wide difference be- 
 tween a prepared and an unprepared mind, 
 under such solemn circumstances, as exem- 
 
195 
 
 plified in the sister and the younger brother, 
 on the one part, and in the elder brother 
 on the other part : and imploring that all 
 his readers may experience the blessedness 
 that arises from a heart " standing fast, 
 trusting in the Lord." 
 
 Before I dismiss the volume from my 
 hands, I must beg leave not only to press 
 the lesson just alluded to, but to make a 
 few remarks on the contents, generally, of 
 the second part of the work, 
 
 Alas ! how many are acting habitually, 
 with reference to repentance and prepara- 
 tion for eternity, the same infatuated part 
 which the elder brother is here described as 
 acting. They cannot indeed flatter them- 
 selves concerning death, as he did concern- 
 ing the plague, that it will not come : but 
 they hope that it is distant, and they are 
 determined to put off the thoughts of it, 
 and all effectual preparation for it to a 
 future time (a time which probably will 
 never arrive,) of greater leisure and less dis- 
 
 K 2 
 
196 
 
 inclination to the duty. They resolve to 
 look only (as he did,) to what they vainly 
 think the safe alternative — that of continued 
 life and opportunity : whereas the opposite 
 alternative is very possibly the more likely 
 one, even upon the ordinary calculation of 
 life alone — without taking into account the 
 danger of provoking a long-suffering but 
 offended God to pronounce, " Thou fool ! 
 this night thy soul shall be required of thee : 
 thy expected opportunities, on the anticipa- 
 tion of which thou goest on to trifle alike 
 with my justice and my mercy, and to add 
 sin to sin, shall never be vouchsafed thee !" 
 Or, even supposing abused opportunities not 
 to be withdrawn — supposing life and mental 
 powers and religious advantages to be con- 
 tinued — where is the probability that disin- 
 clination to forsake all sin will decrease, by 
 longer continuance in sin? that disposition 
 to turn to God, and confidence to resort to 
 him, will grow up amid renewed and pro- 
 longed rebellion against him ? Oh ! it is a 
 forlorn hope — a perilous risk — a miserable 
 
197 
 
 course : miserable, at present — to continue 
 in " the bondage of corruption " — under 
 " the wrath of God" — the reproaches of 
 conscience — and the terrors of judgment 
 to come. It is miserable at present, as 
 well as infinitely perilous for the future. 
 Some, blessed be God, are recovered from 
 this sad state : but, alas ! how^ many, w^ho 
 had flattered themselves with beino; rescued 
 from it, never are so ; but die as they had 
 lived. They hope that the near prospect of 
 death will work a salutary change in their 
 minds : but of itself it w^ill never do this. 
 If it is ever made the means of it, it is 
 through the gracious influence of " the 
 good Spirit " of God. And what right has 
 that man to flatter himself that this in- 
 fluence will be vouchsafed at last, to save 
 him from the consequence of having " re- 
 sisted " it during all his former and better 
 days ? 
 
 In this view the case of the elder brother 
 is well and naturally depicted. The pre- 
 sence of the plague finds him not only 
 
 K 3 
 
198 
 
 without resource and without comfort, but 
 without that change of disposition, that 
 heart to prepare, which he had flattered 
 himself the danger, becoming imminent, 
 would bring with it. And wisely and well 
 is the thick veil of doubt left hanging over 
 his character to the end. Had his conver- 
 sion, distinct though late, been described, 
 it might better have soothed our feelings, 
 but it w^ould have weakened the salutary 
 impression made upon our hearts ; and 
 even deprived us, to a great degree, of the 
 very weighty and important lesson, which 
 it is the will of God that such cases should 
 commonly afford us. 
 
 Thus many love to persuade themselves 
 that the young ruler, who '* went away 
 sorrowful," indeed, but yet actually went 
 away from our Lord, from love of his 
 riches, afterwards repented and returned to 
 him. It might be so : but it is not in the 
 record : we know nothing of it, if he did : 
 and the case is unspeakably more instruc- 
 tive, and more suited to warn and to profit 
 
199 
 
 us, than if such an addition had been made 
 to the narrative. Now he stands to us a 
 solemn monitor, How hardly shall they that 
 have riches enter into the kingdom of God I 
 May many of my readers, specially of 
 those younger readers, who I hope will be 
 attracted by the affecting narratives and in- 
 teresting conversations of this little volume, 
 be warned by the sad case of the elder 
 brother. " His passions," we are told, not 
 his piety, were agitated when the hour came 
 upon him ; he was in a continual hurry of 
 mind, and terrible alarm, even to amaze- 
 ment : he thought himself secure no where ; 
 made all the restraints in the ship more 
 severe than was reasonable ; and, when he 
 read the bills of mortality, would tremble, 
 and fall into such agonies as can hardly be 
 described." Oh, to-day, while it is called to- 
 day, hear God's voice ; " seek him while he 
 may be found, call upon him while he is near. 
 They that seek him early shall find him.^' 
 
 What an encouraging and beautiful ex- 
 
200 
 
 ample of this, in the next place, is pre- 
 sented to us in the case of the sister in 
 this family. In her we see every thing 
 Christian and feminine, and yet truly he- 
 roic. What a blessing does she prove to 
 her younger brother! And what a blessing 
 is such a young woman suited to prove 
 among all who have 
 
 " Grown up with her 
 Round tlie same fireside ! " 
 
 And, should she be spared to become a wife 
 and a mother, what a blessing to her hus- 
 band, and her children, even to future 
 generations ! 
 
 Nor are such examples merely imaginary. 
 Blessed be God many such really exist, in 
 all their leading rudiments, and only want- 
 ing the aid of circumstances to call them 
 forth into similar activity. What traits of 
 female character did ' the loss of the Kent' 
 bring to light ;^ and one similar example, 
 
 1 We can never forget the note written, signed, directed, and 
 enclosed in a bottle, in the midst of this terrific scene, and 
 afterwards taken up in the West Indies: "The ship Kent, 
 
201 
 
 at least, was presented on board ' the 
 Rothsay Castle,' though no other words of 
 her's are preserved than the sentence/ While 
 there is danger, I hke to face it."^ And 
 in more calm and ordinary cases of trial, 
 the same graces are developed, when the 
 character is really formed on the basis of 
 Christian principle. — Let me be permitted to 
 allude to a death-bed which I have recently 
 visited, that of a dear friend, not, indeed, 
 so youthful as ' the sister' in this narrative 
 is described to be, but yet one in compara- 
 tively early life — the mother of a young 
 family — a circumstance of all others suited 
 to produce anxiety in such a situation. 
 Yet here the blessed effects of " a prepared 
 mind" were most delightfully exhibited. 
 During a long illness, her case only illus- 
 trated the sentence of the prophet, " Thou 
 
 Indiaman, is on fire • E. J. and myself commit our spirits into 
 the hands of our blessed Redeemer; His grace enables us to be 
 composed in the awful prospect of entering into eternity. 
 J W. R. M'Gregor, 15th March, 1825; Bay of Biscay." 
 
 2 Rev. J. H. Stewart's J etters, &c., on the deaths of Mr. 
 and Mrs, W. M. Forster. 
 
 K.5 
 
202 
 
 shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind 
 is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in 
 thee." When I visited her for the last 
 time, her language was, " The time of 
 my illness has been a happy time to me ;" 
 and when she allowed herself to look back 
 on the past, and forward to " the glory to 
 be revealed," and her thoughts to dwell on 
 the promises of the gospel, she seemed 
 overcome with the sense of the goodness 
 that was enjoyed, and that was reserved for 
 her. To the last moment her language to 
 those around her was, " While I live, con- 
 tinue to pray for me ; and as soon as you 
 think I am safe-landed, then, O praise God 
 for me ! " — To one who alluded to the 
 ground of anxiety above mentioned, and 
 to her being, as she was, relieved from it, 
 she said, *' We cannot anticipate this ; we 
 must not expect it before the time comes ; 
 but, when it comes, then the relief will be 
 vouchsafed." Such is the blessedness of 
 " a prepared mind" — and especially of 
 " serving the Lord from our youth." O 
 
203 
 
 may my youthful readers, especially, be 
 moved to aspire after it, and to seek it in 
 the way marked out to them. 
 
 And then the case of the younger bro- 
 ther is not less affecting and instructive. 
 
 We need not dwell on the warning 
 which all his discouragements and de- 
 spondings, arising from the consciousness 
 of having declined from the right way after 
 seeming to betake himself to it, furnish 
 against departing from God, suffering our 
 impressions to wear away, our convictions 
 to be stifled, our resolutions to remain un- 
 fulfilled. But I would, for a moment, in- 
 sist upon the instruction and encouragement 
 afforded by the happy result of the endea- 
 vours, in which, however for a time dis- 
 consolate, yet (prompted by the zeal and 
 piety of his devoted sister.) he persevered, 
 to return unto God. This admonishes all 
 persons never to yield to despondency, 
 never to think it is now " too late," never 
 to distrust *' infinite mercy," exercised to us 
 
204 
 
 through the all-sufficient sacrifice and merits 
 of our Divine Redeemer. This whole case 
 is, I am persuaded, most truly and scrip- 
 turally pourtrayed ; and it has, blessed be 
 God ! many prototypes in real life. May 
 their number be greatly multiplied ! The 
 word of God speaks nothing but what is 
 inviting and encouraging to every sinner, 
 let the aggravations of his transgressions 
 have been wdiat they may, from the mo- 
 ment he desires to forsake his sins, and 
 turn unto the Lord, " Though he" should 
 for a time " walk in darkness, and have 
 no light," yet '^ let him trust in the name 
 of the Lord, and stay upon his God." 
 " The Lord will have mercy on him ; our 
 God will abundantly pardon" him. " The 
 blood of Jesus Christ shall cleanse him 
 from all sin ;" and he shall be enabled to 
 say, " O Lord I will praise thee: though 
 thou wast angry with me, thine anger is 
 turned away, and thou comfortest me." 
 To every such person we must cry, " O tarry 
 thou the Lord's leisure :" wait earnestly upon 
 
205 
 
 him — wait patiently for him ; "be strong, 
 and he shall comfort thine heart. Wait, I 
 say, on the Lord." " Weeping may endure 
 for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." 
 
 Nor must we pass over in silence the 
 venerable widowed mother of the family — 
 though she too soon vanishes entirely 
 from our view. Her conversation, while 
 it lasts, is highly characteristic, acute, and 
 forcible. Indeed, it is one excellence of 
 these dialogues, that the characters are so 
 well sustained. Each is distinctly marked, 
 and preserves its consistency throughout. 
 To the example and instructions of this 
 excellent parent we naturally trace, under 
 the divine blessing, all the good which 
 grows up in her children. 
 
 Finally : It is not improbable that by 
 many persons, in the present day, the whole 
 of the preparation here recommended, and 
 the course pursued by the two principal 
 characters, will be pronounced much tor) 
 
206 
 
 formal. And on this I would offer a few 
 remarks. 
 
 Wherever the sentiments, or even the 
 language, has appeared not duly evan- 
 gelical, I have acknowledged the fault, 
 and endeavoured to supply the due cor- 
 rection of it ; though, when the whole is 
 taken together, there seems to be but little 
 real ground of complaint under this head. 
 
 That the parties concerned have no no- 
 tion of resting in mere external observ- 
 ances, in a routine of duties, in an opus 
 operatum, is most obvious. The heart is 
 concerned, and the utmost earnestness che- 
 rished throughout; and "peace and joy 
 in believing," and all other Christian tem- 
 pers, and Christian duties, are the result : 
 and, where this is the case, we should 
 rather be disposed to suspect remissness 
 and lukewarmness in ourselves, than to 
 charge formality upon those whose devo- 
 tions, though conducted in a different way 
 from our own, are productive of such effects. 
 
 But in real truth I suspect that, while 
 
207 
 
 some of our predecessors had too much 
 degenerated into formality, we have gone, 
 to our hurt and to the dishonour of rehgion, 
 into the opposite extreme. We have departed 
 so widely from the form and order of reli- 
 gion, as to he in danger of losing much of 
 the spirit of it, which is hardly to be pre- 
 served without them. There is important 
 truth in the maxim, that what is left to any 
 time is apt to be neglected at all times. 
 And is not such the case with the private 
 devotions of many? Set times, and set 
 places are good as the basis of general 
 rules, though, as in the case of all general 
 rules, the deviation from them, at some 
 times, may be proper and advantageous. 
 The observance of special occasions, some 
 of them periodically recurring, is not to be 
 relinquished without our suffering loss from 
 the neglect. The dispensing, altogether, 
 with fast days, and times of peculiar hu- 
 miliation ; the neglect of the seasons set 
 apart by the church for such purposes ; has 
 robbed us, it is to be feared, of many spi- 
 
208 
 
 ritual enjoyments, and of victories over the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, which our 
 pious forefathers ohtained, in the due im- 
 provement of such occasions. With re- 
 spect even to forms and methods of devo- 
 tion : private religious exercises should, 
 certainly, not be confined to them ; our 
 own w^ants, and sins, and sorrows, and 
 mercies, and joys, and those of the indivi- 
 duals, or the collective bodies, with which 
 we are connected, should be brought before 
 the throne of the heavenly grace as they 
 arise : and no man can have duly given ex- 
 pression to them for us in a pre-composed 
 form. Yet the feelings of the mind vary ; 
 the spirits are often dull, the thoughts dis- 
 tracted, the whole soul sluggish and torpid ; 
 and thus the season of devotion is passed 
 over more unprofitably than, perhaps, it 
 might be, would we condescend, in such 
 circumstances, to call in the aid of some 
 course of devotion — not to stand substitute 
 for the emotions of our own hearts, but to 
 call forth those emotions ; to cherish and 
 
209 
 
 assist them. *' While we were thus mus- 
 ing," perhaps, " the lire would burn*' — 
 where nothing but lifeless embers are now 
 at times found. 
 
 Through discarding all methods and 
 courses of devotion, are not some impor- 
 tant topics even habitually passed over, or 
 very scantily and perfunctorily attended to ? 
 
 x\nd so, also, we may, perhaps, properly 
 remark concerning that example of united 
 devotion, in what may still be called rather 
 the private, than the social worship, of near 
 friends, which is exemphfied in the case 
 before us. Were our hearts, in common, 
 more engaged upon the things which per- 
 tain to our souls' welfare, this, I believe, 
 would be more practised. Were times of 
 calamity, such as are described in this book, 
 to revisit us, I doubt not that thev would 
 drive us more to such exercises. And, in 
 the devout performance of them, should we 
 not find that fulfilled, which our Lord has 
 promised? " I say unto you, that, if two 
 of you shall agree on earth as touching 
 
210 
 
 any thing that they shall ask, it shall be 
 done for them of my Father which is in 
 heaven." Matt, xviii. 19. 
 
 There is one other point on which, be- 
 fore we close, the reader may wish to be 
 further assisted in forming an opinion. I 
 refer to the question, how far the work be- 
 fore us records facts, or how far it consists 
 of fiction ? When, in addition to the con- 
 tents of the volume itself, he shall have 
 perused the following sentences from the 
 x\uthor's preface, he will have before him 
 all the means of judging as to this question, 
 which I myself possess. 
 
 " To make this discourse familiar and 
 agreeable to every reader, I have endea- 
 voured to make it as historical as I could ; 
 and have, therefore, intermingled it with 
 some accounts of facts, where I could come 
 at them, and some by report, suited to 
 and calculated for the moral ; endeavour- 
 ing, by all possible and just methods, to 
 
211 
 
 encourage the great work of preparation, 
 which is the main end of this undertaking. 
 The cases I have stated here are suited, 
 with the utmost care, to the circumstances 
 past, and more especially as they are rea- 
 sonably supposed to suit those to come ; 
 and, as I very particularly remember the 
 last visitation of this kind, which afflicted 
 this nation in 1665, and have had occasion 
 to converse with many other persons who 
 lived in this city all the while ; I have 
 chosen some of their cases as precedents 
 for our present instructions. I take leave 
 so far to personate the particular people in 
 their histories, as is needful to the case in 
 hand, without making use of their names ; 
 though, in many cases, I could have de- 
 scended to the very names and particulars 
 of the persons themselves. But it is the 
 example that is the thing aimed at. — As to 
 the religious history here mentioned : till I 
 see some just exception raised against the 
 pattern laid before us in every part of it, I 
 cannot suggest there will be any against the 
 
212 
 
 manner of relating it, and, for that reason, 
 I make no apology for it," 
 
 My opinion then is, 1st. That the his- 
 torical details concerning the plague are 
 strictly accurate, according to the hest in- 
 formation that could be obtained. 2nd. That 
 with respect to the account of the two fa- 
 milies, who are made the vehicles of the 
 information, and occupy the foreground in 
 the respective pieces, the Author had known 
 cases to a great degree corresponding with 
 his narration. Perhaps he has combined, 
 in the story of each, incidents which be- 
 longed to more families than one : yet I 
 have little doubt that, according to his 
 own statement, he could, in most cases, 
 *' have descended to names'' and places. 
 Lastly, with regard to the conversations : 
 Many substantially agreeing with those here 
 given would, under such circumstances, un- 
 questionably occur. The Author had, very 
 probably, known such, and partaken in 
 them ; and in thus detailing them, and 
 putting them into the mouths of suitable 
 
213 
 
 speakers, he has only followed the model of 
 many of the most admired pieces, both an- 
 cient and modern. Truth and fact are at 
 the basis : fiction supplies little more than 
 the decorations of the column. 
 
 *^* I here subjoin extracts from a letter, dated at St. Pe- 
 tersburg, June 22, (O. S.) 1831, during the prevalence of the 
 cholera. It has appeared in several publications, and is, I 
 understand, fully to be relied on, I apprehend it, likewise, 
 proceeds from the pen of a female. 
 
 My dear , — The newspapers will have told you that 
 
 our city is at length visited with the pestilential sword ; would 
 that I could say we were bowing in humility and contrition of 
 spirit, and were asking, Wherefore is this chastisement ? We 
 have sinned and forgotten our God, therefore he visits us with 
 his plagues to teach us that " verily there is a God that 
 judgeth in the earth." Many are for accounting for its ap- 
 pearance by natural causes, and others attribute it to fatality ; 
 yet there are a few who hear the loud call in this judgment 
 to consider our ways. Yes, my beloved, if there ever was a 
 time in which we were more especially called upon to watch, 
 and leave the morrow, it is the present. When I go to bed at 
 night, I desire to he thankful we have been permitted to lie 
 down peacefully ; if I wake in the night, I rejoice to see our 
 span still extended ; and when we assemble in the morning, I 
 think, — Shall we still be preserved, or will one or more have 
 exchanged time for eternity ere the sh.ades of evening close 
 around us? Nothing feels of so much importance as to have 
 a well-grounded hope of being inscribed in the Lamb's book 
 of life. Though I do ask the Lord to spare our lives, that they 
 may be devoted to his service and glory, yet I desire his will, 
 and his will alone, to be our portion. The appearance of this 
 sickness altered all our plans Our family consists of forty- 
 two individuals, so that, in all human probability, some or 
 other will be subject to the disease. The men occasionally go 
 out, and if they remain longer than usual, I begin to fear their 
 having fallen down sick. We close the house from communi- 
 
214 
 
 cation with others as much as possible, and every member of 
 the family who has occasion to go out, and every visitor, has 
 to undergo a ten minutes' fumigation ere they enter the house. 
 Should I not be spared to write to you again, let me tell you I 
 consider it a precious privilege to be here at this season, to 
 sympathise and pray with my friends, to rejoice or weep with 
 them, and watch over my dear children. Some christian 
 families, who had gone into the country for the benefit of pure 
 air, have now all collected together in the city, and rejoice to 
 be near one another for life or for death ; while worldly fa- 
 milies are flying on all sides, striving to carry themselves 
 beyond the present range of the disease. We meet together 
 for worship and for indispensable business, but for nothing 
 else ; and each of us is endeavouring to have his or her 
 worldly affairs in order, lest the summons should come in a 
 
 moment How solemn is eternity, when we feel on the 
 
 brink of it ! How precious then does the immortal soul feel I 
 What a favour to be here ! I desire to rest in the Lord, and if he 
 prolongs my life, I only wish it may be for his service ; nothing 
 else is worth Uving for. Oh, how contemptible does every 
 occupation appear, which is not sanctified by prayer and love 
 to the Lord. My dear friends and I meet each time as though 
 it were for the last time, and part deeply impressed with the 
 uncertainty of seeing each other again in time. This feeling of 
 
 uncertainty is useful to us ail Be not anxious about us ; 
 
 nothing can happen to us contrary to the will of our heavenly 
 Father, who is full of compassion and tender love. Therefore 
 
 leave us in his hands, and be peaceful ; but, my dear , 
 
 pray much for the poor and the ignorant, and that the glory of 
 the Lord may fill all the earth. O, that we were bowing at the 
 foot of the cross, all in a body, as the Ninevites did ; who 
 knows but the Lord would sheath his sword, and send us 
 salvation? .... In the 121st Psalm, the Lord promises to 
 preserve the souls of those who look up to him. The body is 
 only the garment of the soul ; therefore, let us leave it to 
 seek for the preservation of that which is to remain for ever. 
 
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