or staying in the place where we dwell, when visited with an
infectious distemper.
It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on
this particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the direction
or permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments must have
something in them extraordinary; and I ought to consider whether it
did not evidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the will of
Heaven I should not go. It immediately followed in my thoughts, that
if it really was from God that I should stay, He was able effectually to
preserve me in the midst of all the death and danger that would
surround me; and that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from
my habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I believe
to be Divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that He could
cause His justice to overtake me when and where He thought fit.
These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again, and when I came
to discourse with my brother again I told him that I inclined to stay
and take my lot in that station in which God had placed me, and that
it seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the account of what
I have said.
My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I
had suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me
several stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was;
that I ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been
any way disabled by distempers or diseases, and that then not being
able to go, I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having
been my Maker, had an undisputed right of sovereignty in disposing
of me, and that then there had been no difficulty to determine which
was the call of His providence and which was not; but that I should
take it as an intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town,
only because I could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run
away that was to attend me, was ridiculous, since at the time I had my
health and limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel a day
or two on foot, and having a good certificate of being in perfect health,
might either hire a horse or take post on the road, as I thought fit.
Then he proceeded to tell me of the mischievous consequences
which attended the presumption of the Turks and Mahometans in Asia
and in other places where he had been (for my brother, being a
merchant, was a few years before, as I have already observed, returned
from abroad, coming last from Lisbon), and how, presuming upon
their professed predestinating notions, and of every man’s end being
predetermined and unalterably beforehand decreed, they would go
unconcerned into infected places and converse with infected persons,
by which means they died at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a
week, whereas the Europeans or Christian merchants, who kept
themselves retired and reserved, generally escaped the contagion.
Upon these arguments my brother changed my resolutions again,
and I began to resolve to go, and accordingly made all things ready;
for, in short, the infection increased round me, and the bills were risen
to almost seven hundred a week, and my brother told me he would
venture to stay no longer. I desired him to let me consider of it but till
the next day, and I would resolve: and as I had already prepared
everything as well as I could as to MY business, and whom to entrust
my affairs with, I had little to do but to resolve.
I went home that evening greatly oppressed in my mind, irresolute,
and not knowing what to do. I had set the evening wholly -apart to
consider seriously about it, and was all alone; for already people had,
as it were by a general consent, taken up the custom of not going out
of doors after sunset; the reasons I shall have occasion to say more of