“The second famous, or œcumenicall plauge which hath occurred to my reading, was in the raigne of Vibius Gallus, and Volusianus his sonne, according to Calvisius, of Christ 253. This plauge is also related to have had its originall in Æthiopia, and from thense to have diffused itself into all the provinces of the Roman empire, and to have lasted fifteen yeares without intermission. How it raged in Alexandria and Ægypt wee understand from an epistle of Dionysius, the bishop of that city at that time, recorded by Eusebius in his viith book, cap. 22. Hee tells us it fell promiscuously on the heathens and the Christians, though most heavily upon the former, that noe house was free from the dire effects of its rage. From other parts of Affrique wee understand from St. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, in his excellent sermon _de Mortalitate_, made on purpose to animate and strengthen the Christians, who were joynt and fellow sufferers with the heathens, _unde præsentis mortalitatis copia_, as he tearms it—‘the large measure of the present mortality:’ and of its rage at Rome wee find observed out of the Roman history by Calvisius that there dyed of it daily to the number of 5000, and therefore Brightman and Mead, both men sufficiently learned, in their comentaryes upon the Revelations, interpret this plauge to be one of the fearful judgments foretold to breake forth upon the opening of the fourth scale, chap. vi. 8. And Justus Lipsius, a critick of noe ordinary reading, saith of this pestilence in his book _de Constantia_, _lib._ 2, ‘_non alia unquam major lues, &c._’ that his reading did not afford him an example or president of a greater plauge, considering the many countreys it infected in the severall yeares that it lasted.