Online Puritan Works on Spreading Diseases

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Travis Fentiman

Travis Fentiman

Puritan Board Sophomore
The puritans suffered through many spreading diseases and plagues and have given us:

(1) Careful and even handed, cautionary advice in such situations,
(2) noble and heroic examples to follow, and
(3) a wealth of moving and poignant spiritual treasure on this topic.​

Here is a webpage that has collected much of this literature. I hope it will be a blessing to you:

Some of the subsections on the page include:

Spiritual Literature Written during Plagues​

For Pastors & Elders​

On Maintaining Public Worship

For Civil Magistrates​

After Plagues​

On Mourning​
 
"All the epistles written by the apostles are |166| a breathing out of love to their flock, not caring to be spent upon them for their good, that they might get them brought forward and present them as chaste virgins to their bridegroom. Therefore, they style their people 'dearly beloved,' not using words of office or flattery, but of truth and affection. The hireling will flee, but the true shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep [John 10:11, 15]. And if the pest [plague] were in the congregation, he would not leave them, but would go as near them as the Lord’s law, or preservation of his own life, would permit." Sermons on Jeremiah's Lamentations (forthcoming RHB and Naphtali Press), sermon 10.
 
I came across this quote on Dr Scott Clark’s website.

The Synod of Vitre (1583) addressed the issue of ministers visiting those with the plague:

The Deputies of Poitiou demanded, Whether it were expedient that Ministers should visit Persons sick of the Plague. This Assembly leaves the decision of this Case unto the Prudence of the respective Consistories: only judging, that if it be done at all, it must be upon a very urgent cause, that so a whole Church be not expos’d to danger for the sake of a single Person: Unless the Visit may be so managed as to be without danger of Infection, he speaking at a distance to the diseased Party. However, we give it as our Counsel unto the Minister, who foreseeth the approaching danger, that in the ordinary course of his Preaching he do prepare his Church to a patient submission unto this terrible Providence, and that by proper and pertinent Texts of Scripture he do in his Sermons comfort and revive their drooping and desponding Spirits.

John Quick, Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, or, the Acts, Decisions, Decrees, and Canons of thouse famous National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France
https://books.google.com/books?id=xhw-AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA146#v=onepage&q&f=true
 
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