History of the Plague in England | Page 9

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 believed
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.[27]
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 same 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
attend the presumption of the Turks and Mohammedans 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[28] 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 who[29] to intrust
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 by and by.
In the retirement of this evening I endeavored to resolve first what was
my duty to do, and I stated the arguments with which my brother had
pressed me to go into the country, and I set against them the strong
impressions which I had on my mind for staying,--the visible call I
seemed to have from the particular circumstance of my calling, and the
care due from me for the preservation of my effects, which were, as I
might say, my estate; also the intimations which I thought I had from
Heaven, that to me signified a kind of direction to venture; and it
occurred to me, that, if I had what