A breviate of the life of Margaret, the daughter of Francis Charlton ... and…

3. She was apt when she set her mind and heart upon some good work which she counted great, or the welfare of some dear Friend, to be too much pleased in her expectations and self-made promises of the success; and then almost overturned with trouble when they disappointed her. And she too impatiently bore unkindnesses from the friends that were most dear to her, or whom she had much obliged. Her will was set upon good, but her weakness could not bear the crossing or frustration of it.

§. 12. But the great infirmity which tyrannized over her, was a diseased fearfulness, against which she had little more free will or power, than a man in an Ague or Frost, against shaking cold. Her nature was prone to it; and I said before, abundance of sad accidents made that, and trouble of mind, her malady. Besides (as she said) four times in danger of death. 2. And the storming of her Mothers house by Soldiers, firing part, killing, plundering, and threatening the rest. 3. The awakenings of her conversion. 4. The sentence of death by sickness presently, before her peace was settled. 5. The fire next her Lodgings in Sweetings-Alley. 6. The burning of a Merchant, his Wife and Family, in Lothbury, over against her Brother Upton's door. 7. The common terror and confusion at Dunstans Church in Fleet-street, when they thought the Church was falling on their heads while I was preaching, and the people cast themselves down from the Galleries. 8. Her Mothers death. 9. The friendless state she thought she was then left in. 10. The great Plague. 11. The Burning of London. 12. The crack and danger of her Chamber in Aldersgate street. 13. The crack ⟨p. 77⟩and confusion at St. Jameses Market-house. 14. The many Fires and talk of firing since. 15. The common rumours of Murderings and Massacres. 16. The death and dangers of many of her friends, and my own illness. More than all these concurred to make fear and aptness to be troubled, to be her disease: so that she much dreamed of fire and murderers; and her own dreams worked half as dangerously on her as realities; so that she could not bear the clapping of a door, or any thing that had suddenness, noise, or fierceness in it. But all this was more the malady of her body than of her soul; and I accounted had little moral guilt: and I took it for an evidence of the power of grace, that so timorous a person 1. had overcome most of her fears of Hell and Gods desertion. 2. And was more fearless of persecution, imprisonment, or losses and poverty thereby, than I or any that I remember to have known.