How far it may be depended on I know not.He had a wound in his leg,and whenever he came among any people that were not sound,and the infection began to affect him,he said he could know it by that signal,viz.,that his wound in his leg would smart,and look pale and white;so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time for him to withdraw,or to take care of himself,taking his drink,which he always carried about him for that purpose.Now it seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in company with such who thought themselves to be sound,and who appeared so to one another;but he would presently rise up and say publicly,'Friends,here is somebody in the room that has the plague',and so would immediately break up the company.This was indeed a faithful monitor to all people that the plague is not to be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town infected,and people have it when they know it not,and that they likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it themselves;and in this case shutting up the well or removing the sick will not do it,unless they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had conversed with,even before they knew themselves to be sick,and none knows how far to carry that back,or where to stop;for none knows when or where or how they may have received the infection,or from whom.
This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the air being corrupted and infected,and that they need not be cautious of whom they converse with,for that the contagion was in the air.I have seen them in strange agitations and surprises on this account.'I have never come near any infected body',says the disturbed person;'I have conversed with none but sound,healthy people,and yet I have gotten the distemper!''I am sure I am struck from Heaven',says another,and he falls to the serious part.Again,the first goes on exclaiming,'I have come near no infection or any infected person;I am sure it is the air.
We draw in death when we breathe,and therefore 'tis the hand of God;there is no withstanding it.'And this at last made many people,being hardened to the danger,grow less concerned at it;and less cautious towards the latter end of the time,and when it was come to its height,than they were at first.Then,with a kind of a Turkish predestinarianism,they would say,if it pleased God to strike them,it was all one whether they went abroad or stayed at home;they could not escape it,and therefore they went boldly about,even into infected houses and infected company;visited sick people;and,in short,lay in the beds with their wives or relations when they were infected.And what was the consequence,but the same that is the consequence in Turkey,and in those countries where they do those things -namely,that they were infected too,and died by hundreds and thousands?
I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgements of God and the reverence to His providence which ought always to be on our minds on such occasions as these.Doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city,or country,or nation where it falls;a messenger of His vengeance,and a loud call to that nation or country or city to humiliation and repentance,according to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii.7,8):'At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation,and concerning a kingdom,to pluck up,and to pull down,and to destroy it;if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil,I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.'Now to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions,and not to lessen them,it is that I have left those minutes upon record.
I say,therefore,I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those things upon the immediate hand of God,and the appointment and direction of His providence;nay,on the contrary,there were many wonderful deliverances of persons from infection,and deliverances of persons when infected,which intimate singular and remarkable providence in the particular instances to which they refer;and Iesteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous,and do record it with thankfulness.
But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural causes,we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural means;nor is it at all the less a judgement for its being under the conduct of human causes and effects;for,as the Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains nature in its course,so the same Power thinks fit to let His own actings with men,whether of mercy or judgement,to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes;and He is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means,excepting and reserving to Himself nevertheless a power to act in a supernatural way when He sees occasion.Now 'tis evident that in the case of an infection there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for supernatural operation,but the ordinary course of things appears sufficiently armed,and made capable of all the effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion.Among these causes and effects,this of the secret conveyance of infection,imperceptible and unavoidable,is more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of Divine vengeance,without putting it upon supernaturals and miracle.