I had two important things before me: the one was the carrying on my
business and shop, which was considerable, and in which was embarked all
my effects in the world; and the other was the preservation of my life
in so dismal a calamity as I saw apparently was coming upon the whole
city, and which, however great it was, my fears perhaps, as well as
other people's, represented to be much greater than it could be.

The first consideration was of great moment to me. My trade was a
saddler, and as my dealings were chiefly not by a shop or chance trade,
but among the merchants trading to the English colonies in America, so
my effects lay very much in the hands of such. I was a single man, it is
true; but I had a family of servants, who[22] I kept at my business; had
a house, shop, and warehouses filled with goods; and in short to leave
them all as things in such a case must be left, that is to say, without
any overseer or person fit to be trusted with them, had been to hazard
the loss, not only of my trade, but of my goods, and indeed of all I had
in the world.

I had an elder brother at the same time in London, and not many years
before come over from Portugal; and, advising with him, his answer was
in the three words, the same that was given in another case[23] quite
different, viz., "Master, save thyself." In a word, he was for my
retiring into the country, as he resolved to do himself, with his
family; telling me, what he had, it seems, heard abroad, that the best
preparation for the plague was to run away from it. As to my argument of
losing my trade, my goods, or debts, he quite confuted me: he told me
the same thing which I argued for my staying, viz., that I would trust
God with my safety and health was the strongest repulse[24] to my
pretensions of losing my trade and my goods. "For," says he, "is it not
as reasonable that you should trust God with the chance or risk of