The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: esteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do
record it with thankfulness.
But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from
natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by
natural means; nor is it at all the less a judgement for its being under
the conduct of human causes and effects; for, as the Divine Power has
formed the whole scheme of nature and maintains nature in its course,
so the same Power thinks fit to let His own actings with men, whether
of mercy or judgement, to go on in the ordinary course of natural
causes; and He is pleased to act by those natural causes as the
ordinary means, excepting and reserving to Himself nevertheless a
A Journal of the Plague Year |