People might be heard, even along, calling upon God for

to record the accounts of it. in the streets as we passed mercy, and saying, 'I have been a thief,-I have been an adulterer, I have been a murderer,'-and the like; and none durst stop to make the least inquiry into such things, or to administer comfort to the poor creatures, that in the anguish both of soul and body thus cried out. Some of the ministers did visit the sick at first, and for a little while, but it was not to be done; it would have been present death to have gone into some houses. The very buryers of the dead, who were the most hardened creatures in town, were sometimes beaten back, and so terrified, that they durst not go into the houses where whole families were swept away together, and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible, as some were; but this was, indeed, at the first heat of the distemper.

Time inured them to it all; and they ventured everywhere afterwards, without hesitation, as I shall have occasion to mention at large hereafter.

I am supposing now the Plague to be begun, as I have said, and that the magistrates began to take the condition of the people into their serious consideration. What they did as to the regulation of inhabitants, and of infected families, I shall speak to by itself; but as to the affair of health, it is proper to mention it here, that having seen the foolish humour of the people in running after quacks, and mountebanks, wizards, and fortune-tellers, (which they did as above, even to madness,) the Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for relief of the poor; I mean, the diseased poor; and, in particular, ordered the College of Physicians to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of

the most charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time; for this drove the people from haunting the doors of every disperser of bills, and from taking down. blindly, and without consideration, poison for physic, and death instead of life.

This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of the whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the use of the poor, and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody might see it; and copies were given gratis to all that desired it. But as it is public, and to be seen on all occasions, I need not give the reader of this the trouble of it.

I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it came to its extremity, was like the Fire the next year. The Fire which consumed what the Plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end: so the Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others, and telling them what to do, till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead; destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of them the most eminent, and of several of the most skilful surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be conscious to themselves, were good for nothing; and who rather ought, like other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their guilt, from the justice that they could not but expect should punish them, as they knew they had deserved.

Not that it is any derogation from the labour, or application of the physicians, to say they fell in the common calamity: nor is it so intended by me; it rather is to their praise, that they ventured their lives so far as even to lose them in the service of mankind. They endeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of others; but we were not to expect that the physicians could stop God's judgments, or prevent a distemper evidently armed from Heaven, from executing the errand it was sent about.

Doubtless, the physicians assisted many by their skill, and by their prudence and applications, to the saving of their lives, and restoring their health; but it is not lessening their character, or their skill, to say, they could not cure those that had the tokens upon them, or those who were mortally infected before the physicians were sent for, as was frequently the case.-History of the Plague.

2. The Abatement and End of the Pestilence.

I WOULD be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year with some particular examples historically; I mean of the thankfulness to God our Preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful calamity. Certainly, the circumstances of the deliverance, as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation for it; the circumstances of the deliverance were, indeed, very remarkable, as I have in part mentioned already; and particularly, the dreadful condition which we were all in, when we were, to the surprise of the whole town, made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power could have done it; the contagion despised all medicine, death raged in every corner; and

had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all and everything that had a soul. Men began to despair, every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terror of death sat in the countenances of the people.

In that very moment when we might very well say, Vain was the help of man; I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a most agreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself; and the malignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numbers were sick, yet fewer died; and the very first week's bill decreased 1843, a vast number indeed.

It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very countenances of the people, that Thursday morning when the weekly bill came out; it might have been perceived in their countenances, that a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody's face; they shook one another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the same side of the way with one another before; where the streets were not too broad, they would open their windows, and call from one house to another, and asked how they did, and if they had heard the good news that the plague was abated; some would return, when they said good news, and ask, What good news? And when they answered that the plague was abated, and the bills decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, God be praised; and would weep aloud for joy, telling them they had heard nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people, that it was as it were to them life from the grave. I could almost set down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy, as of their grief, but that would be to lessen the value of it.

It is now, as I said before, the people had cast off all

apprehension, and that too fast; indeed we were no more afraid now to pass by a man with a white cap upon his head, or with a cloth wrapt round his neck, or with his leg limping, occasioned by the sores in his groin, all which were frightful to the last degree but the week before; but now the street was full of them, and these poor recovering creatures, give them their due, appeared very sensible of their unexpected deliverance; and I should wrong them very much, if I should not acknowledge, that I believe many of them were really thankful; but I must own, that for the generality of the people, it might too justly be said of them as was said of the children of Israel, after their being delivered from the host of Pharaoh, when they passed the Red Sea, and looked back, and saw the Egyptians overwhelmed in the water; viz., that they sang but they soon forgot His works.-History of the Plague.

3. The Trader.

TRADE must not be entered into as a thing of light concern; it is called business very properly, for it is a business for life, and ought to be followed as one of the great businesses of life. He that trades in jest, will certainly break in earnest; and this is one reason why so many tradesmen come to so hasty a conclusion of their affairs. It must be followed with a full attention of the mind, and full attendance of the person; nothing but what are to be called the necessary duties of life are to intervene; and even those are to be limited so as not to be prejudicial to business.

The duties of life, which are either spiritual or secular, must not interfere with, nor jostle one another out of its place. It is the duty of every Christian to worship God, to pay his homage morning and evening to his Maker, and at all other proper seasons to behave as becomes a sincere