CONVERSATIONS, ETC. 66 WE now come to preparations for the Pestilence; preparations of mind, such as may fit us for meeting the visitation without injury, should God be pleased to send it upon us; and that, whether its issue to us be life or death. This," our author observes, "is the hardest part of the work by far; but, of the two, of infinitely the greater consequence; in proportion as the eternal state into which we are all to pass from this life is more important than the present state.-Life and time," he proceeds, "are indeed of an inestimable value; but they are so only or principally, as on the happy conclusion of them depends the eternal welfare of the person to whom they are so valuable. The preparations for an eternal state are only to be made in time, which once slipped away, lost and unapplied, is irrecoverably lost for ever. "The approaches of death are oftentimes imperceptible, and the attacks sudden; the distempers by which we are carried away are violent; and it is a double terror to the dying person to have the work of dying and the work of repentance both upon his hands together. O sinner! remember that the terrors of thy conscience will be a weight too heavy to be borne at the same time with the terrors of death: nay, the terrors of conscience are those alone which give terrors to death, and make the passage out of life dreadful. . . . It is enough to have a violent fever drink up the moisture and life, and not at the same time to have the arrows of the Almighty drinking up the spirits. Therefore that we may prepare in time for the dreadful moments which are approaching; that when the call is heard no other noise may drown our comforts; and that the business of life may now without any delay be to prepare for death: that such may be the case, this tract is written. The apprehensions we are under at this time of the approaching calamity, which afflicts our neighbours,' are a summons to this preparation; and that more forcible than can be given from the mouth of man: and many thousands will have reason to be thankful for so long a warning, so timely a summons-even all who listen to its voice. The goodness of God is very conspicuous in this, that, as a pestilence, when it comes, sweeps whole towns and cities. of people away, and death rages like an overflowing stream, so that there is then little time given for repentance and calling upon God; so more time is usually given beforehand for these purposes, and that time accompanied with greater advantages, from the impression which is made on the minds of men. That solemn interval ought 1 The French. D pre to be taken as the allotted time of paration, and to be improved accordingly. Of this you shall now be more fully admonished, in some discourses which took place in a family in London just before the last great plague. "The time before that dreadful visitation was, as the present is, a time of apprehension and alarm; though the warning was not so long, or the danger so remote. The distemper, according to that eminent physician Dr. Hodges, was brought to Holland on board a ship, in some bales of goods from the Levant. From Holland it came over hither: how, or by whom, was never particularly known, at least not publicly. The first that died of it here, at least that was put into the bills openly as dead of the plague, was in the parish of St. Giles in the Fields. It was reported that the whole family died; and I have some reason to believe they did but there was but one entered in the weekly bill, and this was about the 20th of December, 1664. : 18 "This was heaven's first alarm to the city of London. As it was a blow near the heart, or in the capital itself, and not, as in France, almost four hundred miles off, so it more nearly touched the people, and their apprehensions seemed to be in proportion more serious and affecting. "At this period, two brothers and a sister, the children of one pious and serious mother, a widow, lived together in one They were all grown to house in the city. They were all 7 years of discretion, the sister (the youngest) being about nineteen, and one of the brothers nearly forty; the other about twentysix years of age. The sister was a most religious and well-instructed young woman: the brothers, men of business, engaged in it and taken up much with it. They had all been religiously educated, and were what we call sober and orderly people; but the gentlemen, being engrossed in business, and hurried in the world, getting money and growing rich, had not made the concern of eternal life the chief business of the present ་ |