2') 0\ IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE i 



interpreting it as the effect of the malice of man, 

 as the work of the Republicans, or of the 

 Papists, according as their prepossessions ran in 

 favour of loyalty or of Puritanism. 



It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one 

 who, standing where I now stand, in what was 

 then a thickly-peopled and fashionable part of 

 London, should have broached to our ancestors 

 the doctrine which I now propound to you that 

 all their hypotheses were alike wrong ; that the 

 plague was no more, in their sense, Divine judg- 

 ment, than the fire was the work of any political, 

 or of any religious, sect; but that they were 

 themselves the authors of both plague and lire, 

 and that they must look to themselves to prevent 

 the recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so 

 peculiarly beyond the reach of human control so 

 evidently the result of the wrath of God, or of the 

 craft and subtlety of an enemy. 



And one may picture to one's self how 

 harmoniously the holy cursing of the Puritan of 

 that day would have chimed in with the unholy 

 cursing and the crackling wit of the Rochest 

 and Sfdleys, and with the revilings of the political 

 fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone <>n 

 to say that, if the return of such misfortunes \\ 

 ever rendered impossible, it would not be in 

 virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, or .f 

 that of Milton; and. as little, by the triumph of 

 republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that 



