Fifth Reason against shutting men in infected Houses from the Condition of those Houses.

BUt if you have no bowels of compassion for us; O have a care of your selves, the shut houses killing no fewer without then within, and being as likely to breed a Plague if it were not as they are sure to encrease it, now it is: imagine Infection it self penned into a rage and fury ready upon the least passage through a door or window to break out and choak a whole street, as that will in a while a City, and that a Kingdome; and this infection growing stronger by the Leaveless despair of the poor Inhabitants, the Rooms hung with Cobweb, the Flowre having dust and rub∣bish enough to bury the Infected, the Meat stinking in the Pan∣try, and the Beer soweing in the Cellar, while the people rot in their several Chambers; the Cloaths when clean infected by the owners, and now being foul infecting them; again Doggs and Cats if alive spreading the infection abroad, if dead increa∣sing it at home; the Air they breath subtly conveying death that way it did formerly life, the water stinking and readier to pro∣voke the flame within, then to quench it: Servants formerly the Page  11 stay and honour, now the burden of the Family.

The poor peoples own endure, if they cannot, as they cannot commonly under this Pestilence expell it, killing them, and if they can, poysoning them i• their sweat is cast by them upon their Cloaths, and evaporated upon the House round them, and by those Cloaths and that House sent back again upon them. In vain are poor people shut within a House, as unless the house itself be shut within another, and that within a third, and so ad Infinitum; the wind, you say, purges the Air round about the house, hardly when so deeply infected as a close house must needs be; yet if the Wind cleareth the Infection of the House; would it not likewise clear that of the people were they admit∣ted to an open and free air?