lamentations were so great everywhere, that a man must have seemed
to have acted even against his reason if he had so much as expected to
escape; and as there was hardly a house but mine in all my
neighbourhood but was infected, so had it gone on it would not have
been long that there would have been any more neighbours to be
infected. Indeed it is hardly credible what dreadful havoc the last
three weeks had made, for if I might believe the person whose
calculations I always found very well grounded, there were not less
than 30,000 people dead and near 100.000 fallen sick in the three
weeks I speak of; for the number that sickened was surprising, indeed
it was astonishing, and those whose courage upheld them all the time
before, sank under it now.
In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city of
London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God – as it were
by His immediate hand to disarm this enemy; the poison was taken
out of the sting. It was wonderful; even the physicians themselves
were surprised at it. Wherever they visited they found their patients
better; either they had sweated kindly, or the tumours were broke, or
the carbuncles went down and the inflammations round them changed
colour, or the fever was gone, or the violent headache was assuaged,
or some good symptom was in the case; so that in a few days
everybody was recovering, whole families that were infected and
down, that had ministers praying with them, and expected death every
hour, were revived and healed, and none died at all out of them.
Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure
discovered, or by any experience in the operation which the
physicians or surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the secret
invisible hand of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgement
upon us; and let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what
they please, it is no enthusiasm; it was acknowledged at that time by
all mankind. The disease was enervated and its malignity spent; and
let it proceed from whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search
for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they
will to lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who
had the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge
that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no
account could be given of it.
If I should say that this is a visible summons to us all to
thankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its increase,
perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing was
over, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a sermon
instead of writing a history, making myself a teacher instead of giving
my observations of things; and this restrains me very much from going
on here as I might otherwise do. But if ten lepers Were healed, and
but one returned to give thanks, I desire to be as that one, and to be
thankful for myself.
Nor will I deny but there were abundance of people who, to all appearance,
were very thankful at that time; for their mouths were stopped, even the
mouths of those whose hearts were not extraordinary long affected with it.
But the impression was so strong at that time that it could not be resisted;
no, not by the worst of the people.
It was a common thing to meet people in the street that were
strangers, and that we knew nothing at all of, expressing their surprise.
Going one day through Aldgate, and a pretty many people being
passing and repassing, there comes a man out of the end of the
Minories, and looking a little up the street and down, he throws his
hands abroad, ‘Lord, what an alteration is here I Why, last week I
came along here, and hardly anybody was to he seen.’ Another man – I
heard him – adds to his words, “Tis all wonderful; ’tis all a dream.’