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 favorably, 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.[333] 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 it is true, also, that a great many of them staid, 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 staid, and their courage is to be commended and highly valued; but these were not abundance.  It cannot be said that they all staid, 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[334] 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 1665 is 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[335] 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 staid, 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 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 in the field; but it was charging death itself on his pale horse.[336] 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[337] away that had staid most of the time before.