But it could not be obtained;and particularly after the ceasing of the plague in London,when any one that had seen the condition which the people had been in,and how they caressed one another at that time,promised to have more charity for the future,and to raise no more reproaches;I say,any one that had seen them then would have thought they would have come together with another spirit at last.But,I say,it could not be obtained.The quarrel remained;the Church and the Presbyterians were incompatible.As soon as the plague was removed,the Dissenting ousted ministers who had supplied the pulpits which were deserted by the incumbents retired;they could expect no other but that they should immediately fall upon them and harass them with their penal laws,accept their preaching while they were sick,and persecute them as soon as they were recovered again;this even we that were of the Church thought was very hard,and could by no means approve of it.
But it was the Government,and we could say nothing to hinder it;we could only say it was not our doing,and we could not answer for it.
On the other hand,the Dissenters reproaching those ministers of the Church with going away and deserting their charge,abandoning the people in their danger,and when they had most need of comfort,and the like:this we could by no means approve,for all men have not the same faith and the same courage,and the Scripture commands us to judge the most favourably and according to charity.
A plague is a formidable enemy,and is armed with terrors that every man is not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to stand the shock against.It is very certain that a great many of the clergy who were in circumstances to do it withdrew and fled for the safety of their lives;but 'tis true also that a great many of them stayed,and many of them fell in the calamity and in the discharge of their duty.
It is true some of the Dissenting turned-out ministers stayed,and their courage is to be commended and highly valued -but these were not abundance;it cannot be said that they all stayed,and that none retired into the country,any more than it can be said of the Church clergy that they all went away.Neither did all those that went away go without substituting curates and others in their places,to do the offices needful and to visit the sick,as far as it was practicable;so that,upon the whole,an allowance of charity might have been made on both sides,and we should have considered that such a time as this of 1665is not to be paralleled in history,and that it is not the stoutest courage that will always support men in such cases.I had not said this,but had rather chosen to record the courage and religious zeal of those of both sides,who did hazard themselves for the service of the poor people in their distress,without remembering that any failed in their duty on either side.But the want of temper among us has made the contrary to this necessary:some that stayed not only boasting too much of themselves,but reviling those that fled,branding them with cowardice,deserting their flocks,and acting the part of the hireling,and the like.I recommend it to the charity of all good people to look back and reflect duly upon the terrors of the time,and whoever does so well see that it is not an ordinary strength that could support it.It was not like appearing in the head of an army or charging a body of horse in the field,but it was charging Death itself on his pale horse;to stay was indeed to die,and it could be esteemed nothing less,especially as things appeared at the latter end of August and the beginning of September,and as there was reason to expect them at that time;for no man expected,and I dare say believed,that the distemper would take so sudden a turn as it did,and fall immediately two thousand in a week,when there was such a prodigious number of people sick at that time as it was known there was;and then it was that many shifted away that had stayed most of the time before.
Besides,if God gave strength to some more than to others,was it to boast of their ability to abide the stroke,and upbraid those that had not the same gift and support,or ought not they rather to have been humble and thankful if they were rendered more useful than their brethren?
I think it ought to be recorded to the honour of such men,as well clergy as physicians,surgeons,apothecaries,magistrates,and officers of every kind,as also all useful people who ventured their lives in discharge of their duty,as most certainly all such as stayed did to the last degree;and several of all these kinds did not only venture but lose their lives on that sad occasion.
I was once making a list of all such,I mean of all those professions and employments who thus died,as I call it,in the way of their duty;but it was impossible for a private man to come at a certainty in the particulars.I only remember that there died sixteen clergymen,two aldermen,five physicians,thirteen surgeons,within the city and liberties before the beginning of September.But this being,as I said before,the great crisis and extremity of the infection,it can be no complete list.As to inferior people,I think there died six-and-forty constables and head-boroughs in the two parishes of Stepney and Whitechappel;but I could not carry my list oil,for when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us,it drove us out of all measures.Men did then no more (lie by tale and by number.They might put out a weekly bill,and call them seven or eight thousand,or what they pleased;'tis certain they died by heaps,and were buried by heaps,that is to say,without account.And if I might believe some people,who were more abroad and more conversant with those things than I though I was public enough for one that had no more business to do than I had,-I say,if I may believe them,there was not many less buried those first three weeks in September than 20,000per week.
