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 they not 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 honor 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 staid did to the last degree; and several of these kinds did not only venture, but lost 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 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 headboroughs[338] in the two parishes of Stepney and Whitechapel; but I could not carry my list on, for when the violent rage of the distemper, in September, came upon us, it drove us out of all measure.  Men did then no more die by tale[339] and by number:  they might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased.  It is 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 we may believe them, there was not many less buried those first three weeks in September than twenty thousand per week.  However the others aver the truth of it, yet I rather choose to keep to the public account.  Seven or eight thousand per week is enough to make good all that I have said of the terror of those times; and it is much to the satisfaction of me that write, as well as those that read, to be able to say that everything is set down with moderation, and rather within compass than beyond it.

Upon all these accounts, I say, I could wish, when we were recovered, our conduct had been more distinguished for charity and kindness, in remembrance of the past calamity, and not so much in valuing ourselves upon our boldness in staying; as if all men were cowards that fly from the hand of God, or that those who stay do not sometimes owe their courage to their ignorance, and despising the hand of their Maker, which is a criminal kind of desperation, and not a true courage.