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NARRATIVES

OF

TWO FAMILIES EXPOSED TO THE

GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON,

A. D. 1665;

WITH

CONVERSATIONS

ON

RELIGIOUS PREPARATION FOR PESTILENCE.

REPUBLISHED, WITH NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS,

BY JOHN SCOTT, M. A.

VICAR OF NORTH FERRIBY, AND MINISTER OF S. MARY'S, HULL,

ETC.

MISCUIT UTILE DULCI.

PRINTED FOR R. B. SEELEY AND W. BURNSIDE :
AND SOLD BY L. B. SEELEY AND SONS,
FLEET STREET, LONDON.

MDCCCXXXII.

PRINTED BY L. B. SEELEY AND SONS, WESTON GREEN,

THAMES DITTON.

PREFACE,

BY THE EDITOR.

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SOME four or five and thirty years ago my attention was attracted, at a bookstall in London, to a small duodecimo volume, neatly bound, and lettered on the back, PLAGUE FOR SOUL AND BODY.' The title page furnished the rectification of this grotesque labelling: Preparations for the Plague, (Preparations) as well for Soul as Body." -The work is anonymous-printed at London "for E. Matthews at the Bible, and J. Batley at the Dove, in Paternoster Row," in 1722. This was a time when the plague, which had com

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menced at Marseilles in 1720, was still raging in France, and was making such progress towards our own shores as induced the government of that day to adopt measures, similar to those which are now employed to prevent, by the blessing of God upon them, the introduction or diffusion of another fatal disease amongst us, which is calculated to have carried off, in various parts of the world, as many as fifty millions of our fellow creatures within the last fourteen years!-In particular we may observe, that at the period referred to those prayers were first introduced, which are now by public authority again used amongst us.1

I purchased for sixpence the little volume I have described: and, on perusing it, found it to contain, in the form of a history of a family shut up in London at the time, an Account of the great plague of A. D. 1665, which is highly

• Christian Observer, Nov. 1831.

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interesting and affecting, and at the same time free from those minute and revolting descriptions, which sometimes make us turn away from such narratives with horror. This is followed by a series of Conversations between the members of another family, exposed to the same awful visitation, on the spiritual preparation requisite to fortify the mind in the prospect of such a calamity, and to secure our meeting it unharmed, if it should really come.

Several friends, to whom I lent the volume, read it with no less gratification than it had afforded me: and, during the many years that I have now had a family about me, it has been so much a favourite among them, that I found I could seldom afford a greater treat to my children, than by allowing them the use of "the Plague Book."

The Conversations I conceive to be of a highly useful character, as well as entertaining. Very forcibly indeed do

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