clergymen did shut up their churches, and fled, as other people did,
for the safety of their lives, yet all did not do so. Some ventured to
officiate and to keep up the assemblies of the people by constant
prayers, and sometimes sermons or brief exhortations to repentance
and reformation, and this as long as any would come to hear them.
And Dissenters did the like also, and even in the very churches where
the parish ministers were either dead or fled; nor was there any room
for making difference at such a time as this was.
It was indeed a lamentable thing to hear the miserable lamentations
of poor dying creatures calling out for ministers to comfort them and
pray with them, to counsel them and to direct them, calling out to God
for pardon and mercy, and confessing aloud their past sins. It would
make the stoutest heart bleed to hear how many warnings were then
given by dying penitents to others not to put off and delay their
repentance to the day of distress; that such a time of calamity as this
was no time for repentance, was no time to call upon God. I wish I
could repeat the very sound of those groans and of those exclamations
that I heard from some poor dying creatures when in the height of
their agonies and distress, and that I could make him that reads this
hear, as I imagine I now hear them, for the sound seems still to ring in
my ears.
If I could but tell this part in such moving accents as should alarm
the very soul of the reader, I should rejoice that I recorded those
things, however short and imperfect.
It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound in
health, but very impatient of being pent up within doors without air,
as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and I could not restrain
myself, but I would go to carry a letter for my brother to the post-
house. Then it was indeed that I observed a profound silence in the
streets. When I came to the post-house, as I went to put in my letter I
saw a man stand in one corner of the yard and talking to another at a
window, and a third had opened a door belonging to the office. In the
middle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at
it, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how
long it had lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an
hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not know
but the person who dropped it might come back to look for it. I had
no such need of money, nor was the sum so big that I had any
inclination to meddle with it, or to get the money at the hazard it
might be attended with; so I seemed to go away, when the man who
had opened the door said he would take it up, but so that if the right
owner came for it he should be sure to have it. So he went in and
fetched a pail of water and set it down hard by the purse, then went
again and fetch some gunpowder, and cast a good deal of powder
upon the purse, and then made a train from that which he had thrown
loose upon the purse. The train reached about two yards. After this
he goes in a third time and fetches out a pair of tongs red hot, and
which he had prepared, I suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to
the train of powder, that singed the purse and also smoked the air
sufficiently. But he was not content with that, but he then takes up the
purse with the tongs, holding it so long till the tongs burnt through the
purse, and then he shook the money out into the pail of water, so he
carried it in. The money, as I remember, was about thirteen shilling
and some smooth groats and brass farthings.