Nicole’s Reviews > A Journal of the Plague Year > Status Update

“A dreadful plague in London was, in the year 65, Which swept an Hundred Thousand Souls Away, yet I alive!”

“I must own that for the generality of the people it might be too justly said of them, as was said of the children of Israel? After their being delivered from the host of Israel….Tbay they sang his praise, but they soon forgot his works.”

“Let the philosophers search for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labor as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their maker; those physicians, who had the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could be given of it.”

“In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate hand to disarm this enemy. The poison was taken out of the sting, it was wonderful, even the physicians themselves were surprised by it”

“I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before this happened, for the prodigious number that were taken suck the week or two before, besides those that died, was such and the lamentations were so great everywhere, that man must have seemed to have acted even against his reason if he had so much as expected to escape”

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power could’ve done it; the contagion despised all medicine, death raged in every corner & had it gone on as it did, a few weeks would have cleared the town of all…men everywhere began to despair, every heart failed them for fear, people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls &the terrors of death sat in the very faces & countenances

“Some fancies they (quacks and fake doctors) we’re all swept away in the infection to a man, and we’re for calling it a particular mark of God’s vengeance upon them for leading the poor people into the pit of destruction, merely for the lucre of a little money they got by them; but I cannot go that length neither”

“Upon all these accounts I say I could wish, when we were recovered, our conduct had been more distinguished for charity and kindness in thr remembersnce of the past calamity, and not so much a valuing our selves upon our boldness in staying, as if all men were cowards they fly from the hand of God…”

“Besides, if God gave strength to some more than to others, was it to boast of their ability to abide the stroke, and up en raid 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 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 will 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 into 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”