courage enough to stand it, but removed into the country as they found
means for escape. As then some parish churches were quite vacant
and forsaken, the people made no scruple of desiring such Dissenters
as had been a few years before deprived of their livings by virtue of
the Act of Parliament called the Act of Uniformity to preach in the
churches; nor did the church ministers in that case make any difficulty
of accepting their assistance; so that many of those whom they called
silenced ministers had their mouths opened on this occasion and
preached publicly to the people.
Here we may observe and I hope it will not be amiss to take notice
of it that a near view of death would soon reconcile men of good
principles one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy
situation in life and our putting these things far from us that our
breaches are fomented, ill blood continued, prejudices, breach of
charity and of Christian union, so much kept and so far carried on
among us as it is. Another plague year would reconcile all these
differences; a dose conversing with death, or with diseases that
threaten death, would scum off the gall from our tempers, remove the
animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing eyes than
those which we looked on things with before. As the people who had
been used to join with the Church were reconciled at this time with
the admitting the Dissenters to preach to them, so the Dissenters, who
with an uncommon prejudice had broken off from the communion of
the Church of England, were now content to come to their parish
churches and to conform to the worship which they did not approve of
before; but as the terror of the infection abated, those things all
returned again to their less desirable channel and to the course they
were in before.
I mention this but historically. I have no mind to enter into
arguments to move either or both sides to a more charitable
compliance one with another. I do not see that it is probable such a
discourse would be either suitable or successful; the breaches seem
rather to widen, and tend to a widening further, than to closing, and
who am I that I should think myself able to influence either one side
or other? But this I may repeat again, that ’tis evident death will
reconcile us all; on the other side the grave we shall be all brethren
again. In heaven, whither I hope we may come from all parties and
persuasions, we shall find neither prejudice or scruple; there we shall
be of one principle and of one opinion. Why we cannot be content to
go hand in hand to the Place where we shall join heart and hand
without the least hesitation, and with the most complete harmony and
affection – I say, why we cannot do so here I can say nothing to,
neither shall I say anything more of it but that it remains to be lamented.
I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time,
and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us every day,
the dreadful extravagancies which the distraction of sick people drove
them into; how the streets began now to be fuller of frightful objects,
and families to be made even a terror to themselves. But after I have
told you, as I have above, that one man, being tied in his bed, and
finding no other way to deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his
candle, which unhappily stood within his reach, and burnt himself in
his bed; and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced
and sung naked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy from another; I
say, after I have mentioned these things, what can be added more?
What can be said to represent the misery of these times more lively to
the reader, or to give him a more perfect idea of a complicated distress?
I must acknowledge that this time was terrible, that I was sometimes
at the end of all my resolutions, and that I had not the courage that I