Vacant churches, neglected parishes, and excited multitudes presented opportunities of usefulness to some of the ejected ministers, of which, in spite of the Bishop's precautions, they were quick to avail themselves. [Sidenote: THE PLAGUE.] Thomas Vincent had been a student at Christ Church when Dr. Owen was Dean, and upon leaving the University, became chaplain to the Earl of Leicester. He succeeded Mr. Case in the living of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, whence he was ejected by the Act of Uniformity. In his retirement he devoted himself to the study of the Bible, and committed to memory large portions of it, observing to his friends, that he did not know, but that they who had taken from him his pulpit, might, in time, take from him his Bible. When the Plague broke out he was residing at Islington; for some time it did not penetrate into that neighbourhood, but sympathy with sufferers, not far off, proved a stronger feeling than a regard for his own safety. Contrary to the advice of some of his friends, he devoted himself to the work of preaching and visiting, in districts where the pestilence prevailed; and he states, as remarkable,[472] that pious people "died with such comfort as Christians do not ordinarily arrive unto, except when they are called forth to suffer martyrdom for the testimony of Jesus Christ." So extraordinary was his preaching, that it became a general inquiry every week, where he would be on the following Sunday--and amongst the multitudes who crowded to listen to his ministry, many persons were awakened by his searching discourses. With a total disregard of the danger of such gatherings at such a time, people crowded large edifices to suffocation. The broad aisles, as well as the pews and benches, were packed with one dense mass--anxious countenances looked up to the Divine in his black cap; the reading of the Scriptures, the prayer, and the sermon, being listened to amidst a breathless silence, only broken at intervals by half-suppressed sobs and supplications. [Sidenote: 1665.] Other methods of usefulness were employed. In a volume of broadsheets in the British Museum may be seen "Short Instructions for the Sick, especially who, by contagion or otherwise, are deprived of the presence of a faithful pastor, by Richard Baxter, written in the Great Plague Year,"--full of characteristic appeals, intended to be pasted on the cottage-wall, as a faithful monitor to all the inmates.