His ordinary instruments or factors which he useth, as God himself, did good kings, lawful magistrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his church, [6385]are politicians, statesmen, priests, heretics, blind guides, impostors, pseudoprophets, to propagate his superstition. And first to begin of politicians, it hath ever been a principal axiom with them to maintain religion or superstition, which they determine of, alter and vary upon all occasions, as to them seems best, they make religion mere policy, a cloak, a human invention, nihil aeque valet ad regendos vulgi animos ac superstitio, as [6386]Tacitus and [6387]Tully hold. Austin, l. 4. de civitat. Dei. c. 9. censures Scaevola saying and acknowledging expedire civitates religione falli, that it was a fit thing cities should be deceived by religion, according to the diverb, Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur, if the world will be gulled, let it be gulled, 'tis good howsoever to keep it in subjection. 'Tis that [6388]Aristotle and [6389]Plato inculcate in their politics, "Religion neglected, brings plague to the city, opens a gap to all naughtiness." 'Tis that which all our late politicians ingeminate. Cromerus, l. 2. pol. hist. Boterus, l. 3. de incrementis urbium. Clapmarius, l. 2. c. 9. de Arcanis rerump. cap. 4. lib. 2. polit. Captain Machiavel will have a prince by all means to counterfeit religion, to be superstitious in show at least, to seem to be devout, frequent holy exercises, honour divines, love the church, affect priests, as Numa, Lycurgus, and such lawmakers were and did, non ut his fidem habeant, sed ut subditos religionis metu facilius in officio contineant, to keep people in obedience. [6390]Nam naturaliter (as Cardan writes) lex Christiana lex est pietatis, justitiae, fidei, simplicitatis, &c. But this error of his, Innocentius Jentilettus, a French lawyer, theorem. 9. comment. 1. de Relig, and Thomas Bozius in his book de ruinis gentium et Regnorum have copiously confuted. Many politicians, I dare not deny, maintain religion as a true means, and sincerely speak of it without hypocrisy, are truly zealous and religious themselves. Justice and religion are the two chief props and supporters of a well-governed commonwealth: but most of them are but Machiavellians, counterfeits only for political ends; for solus rex (which Campanella, cap. 18. atheismi triumphali observes), as amongst our modern Turks, reipub. Finis, as knowing [6391]magnus ejus in animos imperium; and that, as [6392]Sabellicus delivers, "A man without religion, is like a horse without a bridle." No way better to curb than superstition, to terrify men's consciences, and to keep them in awe: they make new laws, statutes, invent new religions, ceremonies, as so many stalking horses, to their ends. [6393]Haec enim (religio) si falsa sit, dummodo vera credatur, animorum ferociam domat, libidines coercet, subditos principi obsequentes efficit. [6394]Therefore (saith [6395]Polybius of Lycurgus), "did he maintain ceremonies, not that he was superstitious himself, but that he had perceived mortal men more apt to embrace paradoxes than aught else, and durst attempt no evil things for fear of the gods." This was Zamolcus's stratagem amongst the Thracians, Numa's plot, when he said he had conference with the nymph Aegeria, and that of Sertorius with a hart; to get more credit to their decrees, by deriving them from the gods; or else they did all by divine instinct, which Nicholas Damascen well observes of Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos, they had their laws dictated, monte sacro, by Jupiter himself. So Mahomet referred his new laws to the [6396]angel Gabriel, by whose direction he gave out they were made. Caligula in Dion feigned himself to be familiar with Castor and Pollux, and many such, which kept those Romans under (who, as Machiavel proves, lib. 1. disput. cap. 11. et 12. were Religione maxime moti, most superstitious): and did curb the people more by this means, than by force of arms, or severity of human laws. Sola plebecula eam agnoscebat (saith Vaninus, dial. 1. lib. 4. de admirandis naturae arcanis) speaking of religion, que facile decipitur, magnates vero et philosophi nequaquam, your grandees and philosophers had no such conceit, sed ad imperii conformationem et amplificationem quam sine praetextu religionis tueri non poterant; and many thousands in all ages have ever held as much, Philosophers especially, animadvertebant hi semper haec esse fabellas, attamen ob metum publicae potestatis silere cogebantur they were still silent for fear of laws, &c. To this end that Syrian Phyresides, Pythagoras his master, broached in the East amongst the heathens, first the immortality of the soul, as Trismegistus did in Egypt, with a many of feigned gods. Those French and Briton Druids in the West first taught, saith [6397]Caesar, non interire animas (that souls did not die), "but after death to go from one to another, that so they might encourage them to virtue." 'Twas for a politic end, and to this purpose the old [6398]poets feigned those elysian fields, their Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, their infernal judges, and those Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto's kingdom, and variety of torments after death. Those that had done well, went to the elysian fields, but evil doers to Cocytus, and to that burning lake of [6399]hell with fire, and brimstone for ever to be tormented. 'Tis this which [6400]Plato labours for in his Phaedon, et 9. de rep. The Turks in their Alcoran, when they set down rewards, and several punishments for every particular virtue and vice, [6401]when they persuade men, that they that die in battle shall go directly to heaven, but wicked livers to eternal torment, and all of all sorts (much like our papistical purgatory), for a set time shall be tortured in their graves, as appears by that tract which John Baptista Alfaqui, that Mauritanian priest, now turned Christian, hath written in his confutation of the Alcoran. After a man's death two black angels, Nunquir and Nequir (so they call them) come to him to his grave and punish him for his precedent sins; if he lived well, they torture him the less; if ill, per indesinentes cruciatus ad diem fudicii, they incessantly punish him to the day of judgment, Nemo viventium qui ad horum mentionem non totus horret et contremiscit, the thought of this crucifies them all their lives long, and makes them spend their days in fasting and prayer, ne mala haec contingant, &c. A Tartar prince, saith Marcus Polus, lib. 1. cap. 23. called Senex de Montibus, the better to establish his government amongst his subjects, and to keep them in awe, found a convenient place in a pleasant valley, environed with hills, in [6402]"which he made a delicious park full of odoriferous flowers and fruits, and a palace of all worldly contents," that could possibly be devised, music, pictures, variety of meats, &c., and chose out a certain young man, whom with a [6403]soporiferous potion he so benumbed, that he perceived nothing: "and so fast asleep as he was, caused him to be conveyed into this fair garden:" where after he had lived awhile in all such pleasures a sensual man could desire, [6404]"He cast him into a sleep again, and brought him forth, that when he awaked he might tell others he had been in Paradise." The like he did for hell, and by this means brought his people to subjection. Because heaven and hell are mentioned in the scriptures, and to be believed necessary by Christians: so cunningly can the devil and his ministers, in imitation of true religion, counterfeit and forge the like, to circumvent and delude his superstitious followers. Many such tricks and impostures are acted by politicians, in China especially, but with what effect I will discourse in the symptoms.

Next to politicians, if I may distinguish them, are some of our priests (who make religion policy), if not far beyond them, for they domineer over princes and statesmen themselves. Carnificinam exercent, one saith they tyrannise over men's consciences more than any other tormentors whatsoever, partly for their commodity and gain; Religionem enim omnium abusus (as [6405]Postellus holds), quaestus scilicet sacrificum in causa est: for sovereignty, credit, to maintain their state and reputation, out of ambition and avarice, which are their chief supporters: what have they not made the common people believe? Impossibilities in nature, incredible things; what devices, traditions, ceremonies, have they not invented in all ages to keep men in obedience, to enrich themselves? Quibus quaestui sunt capti superstitione animi, as [6406]Livy saith. Those Egyptian priests of old got all the sovereignty into their hands, and knowing, as [6407]Curtius insinuates, nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio; melius vatibus quam ducibus parent, vana religione capti, etiam impotentes faeminae; the common people will sooner obey priests than captains, and nothing so forcible as superstition, or better than blind zeal to rule a multitude; have so terrified and gulled them, that it is incredible to relate. All nations almost have been besotted in this kind; amongst our Britons and old Gauls the Druids; magi in Persia; philosophers in Greece; Chaldeans amongst the Oriental; Brachmanni in India; Gymnosophists in Ethiopia; the Turditanes in Spain; Augurs in Rome, have insulted; Apollo's priests in Greece, Phaebades and Pythonissae, by their oracles and phantasms; Amphiaraus and his companions; now Mahometan and pagan priests, what can they not effect? How do they not infatuate the world? Adeo ubique (as [6408]Scaliger writes of the Mahometan priests), tum gentium tum locorum, gens ista sacrorum ministra, vulgi secat spes, ad ea quae ipsi fingunt somnia, "so cunningly can they gull the commons in all places and countries." But above all others, that high priest of Rome, the dam of that monstrous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing pope, which now rageth in the West, that three-headed Cerberus hath played his part. [6409] "Whose religion at this day is mere policy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and needs nothing but wit and superstition to maintain it, that useth colleges and religious houses to as good purpose as forts and castles, and doth more at this day" by a company of scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchorites, hypocritical confessors, and those praetorian soldiers, his Janissary Jesuits, and that dissociable society, as [6410]Languis terms it, postremus diaboli conatus et saeculi excrementum, that now stand in the fore front of the battle, will have a monopoly of, and engross all other learning, but domineer in divinity, [6411]Excipiunt soli totius vulnera belli, and fight alone almost (for the rest are but his dromedaries and asses), than ever he could have done by garrisons and armies. What power of prince, or penal law, be it never so strict, could enforce men to do that which for conscience' sake they will voluntarily undergo? And as to fast from all flesh, abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, whip themselves, with stupendous fasting and penance, abandon the world, wilful poverty, perform canonical and blind obedience, to prostrate their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives, and offer up themselves at their superior's feet, at his command? What so powerful an engine as superstition? which they right well perceiving, are of no religion at all themselves: Primum enim (as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and practice of their life proves), arcanae illius theologiae, quod apud eos regnat, caput est, nullum esse deum, they hold there is no God, as Leo X. did, Hildebrand the magician, Alexander VI., Julius II., mere atheists, and which the common proverb amongst them approves, [6412]"The worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of the Romans the priests are wildest, the lewdest priests are preferred to be cardinals, and the baddest men amongst the cardinals is chosen to be pope," that is an epicure, as most part the popes are, infidels and Lucianists, for so they think and believe; and what is said of Christ to be fables and impostures, of heaven and hell, day of judgment, paradise, immortality of the soul, are all,

[6413] "Rumores vacui, verbaque inania, Et par sollicito fabula somnio."

"Dreams, toys, and old wives' tales." Yet as so many [6414]whetstones to make other tools cut, but cut not themselves, though they be of no religion at all, they will make others most devout and superstitious, by promises and threats, compel, enforce from, and lead them by the nose like so many bears in a line; when as their end is not to propagate the church, advance God's kingdom, seek His glory or common good, but to enrich themselves, to enlarge their territories, to domineer and compel them to stand in awe, to live in subjection to the See of Rome. For what otherwise care they? Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur, "since the world wishes to be gulled, let it be gulled," 'tis fit it should be so. And for which [6415]Austin cites Varro to maintain his Roman religion, we may better apply to them: multa vera, quae vulgus scire non est utile; pleraque falsa, quae tamen uliter existimare populum expedit; some things are true, some false, which for their own ends they will not have the gullish commonalty take notice of. As well may witness their intolerable covetousness, strange forgeries, fopperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impostures, illusions, new doctrines, paradoxes, traditions, false miracles, which they have still forged, to enthral, circumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own estates. [6416]One while by bulls, pardons, indulgencies, and their doctrines of good works, that they be meritorious, hope of heaven, by that means they have so fleeced the commonalty, and spurred on this free superstitious horse, that he runs himself blind, and is an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's patrimony, that from a poor bishop, he is become Rex Regum, Dominus dominantium, a demigod, as his canonists make him (Felinus and the rest), above God himself. And for his wealth and [6417] temporalities, is not inferior to many kings: [6418]his cardinals, princes' companions; and in every kingdom almost, abbots, priors, monks, friars, &c., and his clergy, have engrossed a [6419]third part, half, in some places all, into their hands. Three princes, electors in Germany, bishops; besides Magdeburg, Spire, Saltsburg, Breme, Bamberg, &c. In France, as Bodine lib. de repub. gives us to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 livres; and of twelve parts of the revenues in France, the church possesseth seven. The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this age, have, as [6420]Middendorpius and [6421]Pelargus reckon up, three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more revenues than many princes. In France, as Arnoldus proves, in thirty years they have got bis centum librarum millia annua, 200,000l. I say nothing of the rest of their orders. We have had in England, as Armachanus demonstrates, above 30,000 friars at once, and as [6422]Speed collects out of Leland and others, almost 600 religious houses, and near 200,000l. in revenues of the old rent belonging to them, besides images of gold, silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. Ubi omnia auro nitent, "where everything shines with gold," saith Erasmus, St. Thomas's shrine, &c., may witness. [6424]Delphos so renowned of old in Greece for Apollo's oracle, Delos commune conciliabulum et emporium sola religions manitum; Dodona, whose fame and wealth were sustained by religion, were not so rich, so famous. If they can get but a relic of some saint, the Virgin Mary's picture, idols or the like, that city is for ever made, it needs no other maintenance. Now if any of these their impostures or juggling tricks be controverted, or called in question: if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an heroical Luther, as [6425]Dithmarus Calls him, dare touch the monks' bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar: Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him in pieces, to keep up their trades, [6426] "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:" with a mighty shout of two hours long they will roar and not be pacified.

Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, &c., roaring bulls, this high priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the soul of many a silly man, insulted over majesty itself, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannising Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their galley-slaves. [6427]"The bishop of Rome" (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, de mag. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 1.) "hath done that without arms, which those Roman emperors could never achieve with forty legions of soldiers," deposed kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. [6428] "'Tis a wonder," saith Machiavel, Florentinae, his. lib. 1. "what slavery King Henry II. endured for the death of Thomas a Beckett, what things he was enjoined by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure," and all through superstition. [6429]Henry IV. disposed of his empire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates of Canossus. [6430]Frederic the Emperor was trodden on by Alexander III., another held Adrian's stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphos the Pope's legate, See. What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Britain, &c., into the Holy Land, spend such huge sums of money, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and crouch, but slavish superstition? What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdom in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassins, to meet death, murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instil into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being martyrs and saints: such pretty feats can the devil work by priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts. And if it were not yet enough, by priests and politicians to delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire, another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates. How did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent? Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume. How many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated from Christ! Lucian's Alexander Simon Magus, whose statue was to be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justin Martyr, Simoni deo sancto, &c., after his decease. [6431]Apollonius Tianeus, Cynops, Eumo, who by counterfeiting some new ceremonies and juggling tricks of that Dea Syria, by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of 40,000 men, and did much harm: with Eudo de stellis, of whom Nubrigensis speaks, lib. 1. cap. 19. that in King Stephen's days imitated most of Christ's miracles, fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the air, &c., to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls. In Franconia, 1476, a base illiterate fellow took upon him to be a prophet, and preach, John Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30,000 persons, and was taken by the commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven. [6432] "Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaffs, servants ran from their masters, children from their parents, scholars left their tutors, all to hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the Bishop of Wartzburg, and so he and his heresy vanished together." How many such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign? what chronicles will not afford such examples? that as so many ignes fatui, have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt to be carried about by the blast of every wind, a rude inconstant multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are cluttered together like so many pebbles in a tide. What prodigious follies, madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these impostors, heretics, &c., have thrust upon the world, what strange effects shall be shown in the symptoms.

Now the means by which, or advantages the devil and his infernal ministers take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, simplicity, hope and fear, those two battering cannons and principal engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, purgatory, Limbus Patrum, &c. which now more than ever tyrannise; [6433]"for what province is free from atheism, superstition, idolatry, schism, heresy, impiety, their factors and followers?" thence they proceed, and from that same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us.

[6434] "Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit."———

Our own conscience doth dictate so much unto us, we know there is a God and nature doth inform us; Nulla gens tam barbara (saith Tully) cui non insideat haec persuasio Deum esse; sed nec Scytha, nec Groecus, nec Persa, nec Hyperboreus dissentiet (as Maximus Tyrius the Platonist ser. 1. farther adds) nec continentis nec insularum habitator, let him dwell where he will, in what coast soever, there is no nation so barbarous that is not persuaded there is a God. It is a wonder to read of that infinite superstition amongst the Indians in this kind, of their tenets in America, pro suo quisque libitu varias res venerabantur superstitiose, plantas, animalia, montes, &c. omne quod amabant aut horrebant (some few places excepted as he grants, that had no God at all). So "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament declares his handy work," Psalm xix. "Every creature will evince it;" Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba deum. Nolentes sciunt, fatentur inviti, as the said Tyrius proceeds, will or nill, they must acknowledge it. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Pythagoras, Trismegistus, Seneca, Epictetus, those Magi, Druids, &c. went as far as they could by the light of nature; [6435]multa praeclara, de natura Dei seripta reliquerunt, "writ many things well of the nature of God, but they had but a confused light, a glimpse,"

[6436] "Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Est iter in sylvis,"———

"as he that walks by moonshine in a wood," they groped in the dark; they had a gross knowledge, as he in Euripides, O Deus quicquid es, sive coelum, sive terra, sive aliud quid, and that of Aristotle, Ens entium miserere mei. And so of the immortality of the soul, and future happiness. Immortalitatem animae (saith Hierom) Pythagoras somniavit, Democritus non credidit in consolalionem damnationis suae Socrates in carcere disputavit; Indus, Persa, Cothus, &c. Philosophantur. So some said this, some that, as they conceived themselves, which the devil perceiving, led them farther out (as [6437]Lemnius observes) and made them worship him as their God with stocks and stones, and torture themselves to their own destruction, as he thought fit himself, inspired his priests and ministers with lies and fictions to prosecute the same, which they for their own ends were as willing to undergo, taking advantage of their simplicity, fear and ignorance. For the common people are as a flock of sheep, a rude, illiterate rout, void many times of common sense, a mere beast, bellua multorum capitum, will go whithersoever they are led: as you lead a ram over a gap by the horns, all the rest will follow, [6438]Non qua eundum, sed qua itur, they will do as they see others do, and as their prince will have them, let him be of what religion he will, they are for him. Now for those idolaters, Maxentius and Licinius, then for Constantine a Christian. [6439]Qui Christum negant male pereant, acclamatum est Decies, for two hours' space; qui Christum non colunt, Augusti inimici sunt, acclamatum est ter decies; and by and by idolaters again under that Apostate Julianus; all Arians under Constantius, good Catholics again under Jovinianus, "And little difference there is between the discretion of men and children in this case, especially of old folks and women," as [6440] Cardan discourseth, "when, as they are tossed with fear and superstition, and with other men's folly and dishonesty." So that I may say their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and madness itself: Supplicii causa est, sappliciumque sui. Their own fear, folly, stupidity, to be deplored lethargy, is that which gives occasion to the other, and pulls these miseries on their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, amongst our idolaters, you shall find that the parties first affected, are silly, rude, ignorant people, old folks, that are naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or some poor, rude, illiterate persons, that are apt to be wrought upon, and gulled in this kind, prone without either examination or due consideration (for they take up religion a trust, as at mercers' they do their wares) to believe anything. And the best means they have to broach first, or to maintain it when they have done, is to keep them still in ignorance: for "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness. This hath been the devil's practice, and his infernal ministers in all ages; not as our Saviour by a few silly fishermen, to confound the wisdom of the world, to save publicans and sinners, but to make advantage of their ignorance, to convert them and their associates; and that they may better effect what they intend, they begin, as I say, with poor, [6441]stupid, illiterate persons. So Mahomet did when he published his Alcoran, which is a piece of work (saith [6442]Bredenbachius) "full of nonsense, barbarism, confusion, without rhyme, reason, or any good composition, first published to a company of rude rustics, hog-rubbers, that had no discretion, judgment, art, or understanding, and is so still maintained." For it is a part of their policy to let no man comment, dare to dispute or call in question to this day any part of it, be it never so absurd, incredible, ridiculous, fabulous as it is, must be believed implicite, upon pain of death no man must dare to contradict it, "God and the emperor," &c. What else do our papists, but by keeping the people in ignorance vent and broach all their new ceremonies and traditions, when they conceal the scripture, read it in Latin, and to some few alone, feeding the slavish people in the meantime with tales out of legends, and such like fabulous narrations? Whom do they begin with but collapsed ladies, some few tradesmen, superstitious old folks, illiterate persons, weak women, discontent, rude, silly companions, or sooner circumvent? So do all our schismatics and heretics. Marcus and Valentinian heretics, in [6443]Irenaeus, seduced first I know not how many women, and made them believe they were prophets. [6444]Friar Cornelius of Dort seduced a company of silly women. What are all our Anabaptists, Brownists, Barrowists, familists, but a company of rude, illiterate, capricious, base fellows? What are most of our papists, but stupid, ignorant and blind bayards? how should they otherwise be, when as they are brought up and kept still in darkness? [6445]"If their pastors" (saith Lavater) "have done their duties, and instructed their flocks as they ought, in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them the reading of scriptures, they had not been as they are." But being so misled all their lives in superstition, and carried hoodwinked like hawks, how can they prove otherwise than blind idiots, and superstitious asses? what else shall we expect at their hands? Neither is it sufficient to keep them blind, and in Cimmerian darkness, but withal, as a schoolmaster doth by his boys, to make them follow their books, sometimes by good hope, promises and encouragements, but most of all by fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, do they collogue and soothe up their silly auditors, and so bring them into a fools' paradise. Rex eris aiunt, si recte facies, do well, thou shalt be crowned; but for the most part by threats, terrors, and affrights, they tyrannise and terrify their distressed souls: knowing that fear alone is the sole and only means to keep men in obedience, according to that hemistichium of Petronius, primus in orbe deos fecit timor, the fear of some divine and supreme powers, keeps men in obedience, makes the people do their duties: they play upon their consciences; [6446]which was practised of old in Egypt by their priests; when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry, great miseries were to come; they take all opportunities of natural causes, to delude the people's senses, and with fearful tales out of purgatory, feigned apparitions, earthquakes in Japonia or China, tragical examples of devils, possessions, obsessions, false miracles, counterfeit visions, &c. They do so insult over and restrain them, never hoby so dared a lark, that they will not [6447]offend the least tradition, tread, or scarce look awry: Deus bone ([6448]Lavater exclaims) quot hoc commentum de purgatorio misere afflixit! good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of purgatory!

To these advantages of hope and fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, devices, to batter and enthral, omitting no opportunities, according to men's several inclinations, abilities, to circumvent and humour them, to maintain his superstitions, sometimes to stupefy, besot them: sometimes again by oppositions, factions, to set all at odds and in an uproar; sometimes he infects one man, and makes him a principal agent; sometimes whole cities, countries. If of meaner sort, by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, &c. If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vainglory. If of the clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, scientia inflati, they begin to swell, and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismatics, broach new doctrines, frame new crotchets and the like; or else out of too much learning become mad, or out of curiosity they will search into God's secrets, and eat of the forbidden fruit; or out of presumption of their holiness and good gifts, inspirations, become prophets, enthusiasts, and what not? Or else if they be displeased, discontent, and have not (as they suppose) preferment to their worth, have some disgrace, repulse, neglected, or not esteemed as they fondly value themselves, or out of emulation, they begin presently to rage and rave, coelum terrae, miscent, they become so impatient in an instant, that a whole kingdom cannot contain them, they will set all in a combustion, all at variance, to be revenged of their adversaries. [6449]Donatus, when he saw Cecilianus preferred before him in the bishopric of Carthage, turned heretic, and so did Arian, because Alexander was advanced: we have examples at home, and too many experiments of such persons. If they be laymen of better note, the same engines of pride, ambition, emulation and jealousy, take place, they will be gods themselves: [6450]Alexander in India, after his victories, became so insolent, he would be adored for a god: and those Roman emperors came to that height of madness, they must have temples built to them, sacrifices to their deities, Divus Augustus, D. Claudius, D. Adrianus: [6451]Heliogabalus, "put out that vestal fire at Rome, expelled the virgins, and banished all other religions all over the world, and would be the sole God himself." Our Turks, China kings, great Chams, and Mogors do little less, assuming divine and bombast titles to themselves; the meaner sort are too credulous, and led with blind zeal, blind obedience, to prosecute and maintain whatsoever their sottish leaders shall propose, what they in pride and singularity, revenge, vainglory, ambition, spleen, for gain, shall rashly maintain and broach, their disciples make a matter of conscience, of hell and damnation, if they do it not, and will rather forsake wives, children, house and home, lands, goods, fortunes, life itself, than omit or abjure the least tittle of it, and to advance the common cause, undergo any miseries, turn traitors, assassins, pseudomartyrs, with full assurance and hope of reward in that other world, that they shall certainly merit by it, win heaven, be canonised for saints.

Now when they are truly possessed with blind zeal, and misled with superstition, he hath many other baits to inveigle and infatuate them farther yet, to make them quite mortified and mad, and that under colour of perfection, to merit by penance, going woolward, whipping, alms, fastings, &c. An. 1320. there was a sect of [6452]whippers in Germany, that, to the astonishment of the beholders, lashed, and cruelly tortured themselves. I could give many other instances of each particular. But these works so done are meritorious, ex opere operato, ex condigno, for themselves and others, to make them macerate and consume their bodies, specie virtutis et umbra, those evangelical counsels are propounded, as our pseudo-Catholics call them, canonical obedience, wilful poverty, [6453]vows of chastity, monkery, and a solitary life, which extend almost to all religions and superstitions, to Turks, Chinese, Gentiles, Abyssinians, Greeks, Latins, and all countries. Amongst the rest, fasting, contemplation, solitariness, are as it were certain rams by which the devil doth batter and work upon the strongest constitutions. Nonnulli (saith Peter Forestus) ob longas inedias, studia et meditationes coelestes, de rebus sacris et religione semper agitant, by fasting overmuch, and divine meditations, are overcome. Not that fasting is a thing of itself to be discommended, for it is an excellent means to keep the body in subjection, a preparative to devotion, the physic of the soul, by which chaste thoughts are engendered, true zeal, a divine spirit, whence wholesome counsels do proceed, concupiscence is restrained, vicious and predominant lusts and humours are expelled. The fathers are very much in commendation of it, and, as Calvin notes, "sometimes immoderate. [6454]The mother of health, key of heaven, a spiritual wing to arear us, the chariot of the Holy Ghost, banner of faith," &c. And 'tis true they say of it, if it be moderately and seasonably used, by such parties as Moses, Elias, Daniel, Christ, and his [6455]apostles made use of it; but when by this means they will supererogate, and as [6456]Erasmus well taxeth, Coelum non sufficere putant suis meritis. Heaven is too small a reward for it; they make choice of times and meats, buy and sell their merits, attribute more to them than to the ten Commandments, and count it a greater sin to eat meat in Lent, than to kill a man, and as one sayeth, Plus respiciunt assum piscem, quam Christum crucifixum, plus salmonem quam Solomonem, quibus in ore Christus, Epicurus in corde, "pay more respect to a broiled fish than to Christ crucified, more regard to salmon than to Solomon, have Christ on their lips, but Epicurus in their hearts," when some counterfeit, and some attribute more to such works of theirs than to Christ's death and passion; the devil sets in a foot, strangely deludes them, and by that means makes them to overthrow the temperature of their bodies, and hazard their souls. Never any strange illusions of devils amongst hermits, anchorites, never any visions, phantasms, apparitions, enthusiasms, prophets, any revelations, but immoderate fasting, bad diet, sickness, melancholy, solitariness, or some such things, were the precedent causes, the forerunners or concomitants of them. The best opportunity and sole occasion the devil takes to delude them. Marcilius Cognatus, lib. 1. cont. cap. 7. hath many stories to this purpose, of such as after long fasting have been seduced by devils; and [6457]"'tis a miraculous thing to relate" (as Cardan writes) "what strange accidents proceed from fasting; dreams, superstition, contempt of torments, desire of death, prophecies, paradoxes, madness; fasting naturally prepares men to these things." Monks, anchorites, and the like, after much emptiness, become melancholy, vertiginous, they think they hear strange noises, confer with hobgoblins, devils, rivel up their bodies, et dum hostem insequimur, saith Gregory, civem quem diligimus, trucidamus, they become bare skeletons, skin and bones; Carnibus abstinentes proprias carnes devorant, ut nil praeter cutem et ossa sit reliquum. Hilarion, as [6458]Hierome reports in his life, and Athanasius of Antonius, was so bare with fasting, "that the skin did scarce stick to the bones; for want of vapours he could not sleep, and for want of sleep became idleheaded, heard every night infants cry, oxen low, wolves howl, lions roar" (as he thought), "clattering of chains, strange voices, and the like illusions of devils." Such symptoms are common to those that fast long, are solitary, given to contemplation, overmuch solitariness and meditation. Not that these things (as I said of fasting) are to be discommended of themselves, but very behoveful in some cases and good: sobriety and contemplation join our souls to God, as that heathen [6459]Porphyry can tell us. [6460]"Ecstasy is a taste of future happiness, by which we are united unto God, a divine melancholy, a spiritual wing," Bonaventure terms it, to lift us up to heaven; but as it is abused, a mere dotage, madness, a cause and symptom of religious melancholy. [6461]"If you shall at any time see" (saith Guianerius) "a religious person over-superstitious, too solitary, or much given to fasting, that man will certainly be melancholy, thou mayst boldly say it, he will be so." P. Forestus hath almost the same words, and [6462]Cardan subtil, lib. 18. et cap. 40. lib. 8. de rerum varietate, "solitariness, fasting, and that melancholy humour, are the causes of all hermits' illusions." Lavater, de spect. cap. 19. part. 1. and part. 1. cap. 10. puts solitariness a main cause of such spectrums and apparitions; none, saith he, so melancholy as monks and hermits, the devil's hath melancholy; [6463]"none so subject to visions and dotage in this kind, as such as live solitary lives, they hear and act strange things in their dotage." [6464]Polydore Virgil, lib. 2. prodigiis, "holds that those prophecies and monks' revelations? nuns, dreams, which they suppose come from God, to proceed wholly ab instinctu daemonum, by the devil's means;" and so those enthusiasts, Anabaptists, pseudoprophets from the same cause. [6465]Fracastorius, lib. 2. de intellect, will have all your pythonesses, sibyls, and pseudoprophets to be mere melancholy, so doth Wierus prove, lib. 1. cap. 8. et l. 3. cap. 7. and Arculanus in 9 Rhasis, that melancholy is a sole cause, and the devil together, with fasting and solitariness, of such sibylline prophecies, if there were ever such, which with [6466]Casaubon and others I justly except at; for it is not likely that the Spirit of God should ever reveal such manifest revelations and predictions of Christ, to those Pythonissae witches, Apollo's priests, the devil's ministers, (they were no better) and conceal them from his own prophets; for these sibyls set down all particular circumstances of Christ's coming, and many other future accidents far more perspicuous and plain than ever any prophet did. But, howsoever, there be no Phaebades or sibyls, I am assured there be other enthusiasts, prophets, dii Fatidici, Magi, (of which read Jo. Boissardus, who hath laboriously collected them into a great [6467]volume of late, with elegant pictures, and epitomised their lives) &c., ever have been in all ages, and still proceeding from those causes, [6468]qui visiones suas enarrant, somniant futura, prophetisant, et ejusmodi deliriis agitati, Spiritum Sanctum sibi communicari putant. That which is written of Saint Francis' five wounds, and other such monastical effects, of him and others, may justly be referred to this our melancholy; and that which Matthew Paris relates of the [6469]monk of Evesham, who saw heaven and hell in a vision; of [6470]Sir Owen, that went down into Saint Patrick's purgatory in King Stephen's days, and saw as much; Walsingham of him that showed as much by Saint Julian. Beda, lib. 5. cap. 13. 14. 15. et 20. reports of King Sebba, lib. 4. cap. 11. eccles. hist. that saw strange [6471]visions; and Stumphius Helvet Cornic, a cobbler of Basle, that beheld rare apparitions at Augsburg, [6472]in Germany. Alexander ab Alexandro, gen. dier. lib. 6. cap. 21. of an enthusiastical prisoner, (all out as probable as that of Eris Armenius, in Plato's tenth dialogue de Repub. that revived again ten days after he was killed in a battle, and told strange wonders, like those tales Ulysses related to Alcinous in Homer, or Lucian's vera historia itself) was still after much solitariness, fasting, or long sickness, when their brains were addled, and their bellies as empty of meat as their heads of wit. Florilegus hath many such examples, fol. 191. one of Saint Gultlake of Crowald that fought with devils, but still after long fasting, overmuch solitariness, [6473]the devil persuaded him therefore to fast, as Moses and Elias did, the better to delude him. [6474]In the same author is recorded Carolus Magnus vision an. 185. or ecstasies, wherein he saw heaven and hell after much fasting and meditation. So did the devil of old with Apollo's priests. Amphiaraus and his fellows, those Egyptians, still enjoin long fasting before he would give any oracles, triduum a cibo et vino abstinerent, [6475]before they gave any answers, as Volateran lib. 13. cap. 4. records, and Strabo Geog. lib. 14. describes Charon's den, in the way between Tralles and Nissum, whither the priests led sick and fanatic men: but nothing performed without long fasting, no good to be done. That scoffing [6476]Lucian conducts his Menippus to hell by the directions of that Chaldean Mithrobarzanes, but after long fasting, and such like idle preparation. Which the Jesuits right well perceiving of what force this fasting and solitary meditation is, to alter men's minds, when they would make a man mad, ravish him, improve him beyond himself, to undertake some great business of moment, to kill a king, or the like, [6477]they bring him into a melancholy dark chamber, where he shall see no light for many days together, no company, little meat, ghastly pictures of devils all about him, and leave him to lie as he will himself, on the bare floor in this chamber of meditation, as they call it, on his back, side, belly, till by this strange usage they make him quite mad and beside himself. And then after some ten days, as they find him animated and resolved, they make use of him. The devil hath many such factors, many such engines, which what effect they produce, you shall hear in the following symptoms.

SUBSECT. III.—Symptoms general, love to their own sect, hate of all other religions, obstinacy, peevishness, ready to undergo any danger or cross for it; Martyrs, blind zeal, blind obedience, fastings, vows, belief of incredibilities, impossibilities: Particular of Gentiles, Mahometans, Jews, Christians; and in them, heretics old, and new, schismatics, schoolmen, prophets, enthusiasts, &c.

Fleat Heraclitus, an rideat Democritus? in attempting to speak of these symptoms, shall I laugh with Democritus, or weep with Heraclitus? they are so ridiculous and absurd on the one side, so lamentable and tragical on the other: a mixed scene offers itself, so full of errors and a promiscuous variety of objects, that I know not in what strain to represent it. When I think of the Turkish paradise, those Jewish fables, and pontifical rites, those pagan superstitions, their sacrifices, and ceremonies, as to make images of all matter, and adore them when they have done, to see them, kiss the pyx, creep to the cross, &c. I cannot choose but laugh with Democritus: but when I see them whip and torture themselves, grind their souls for toys and trifles, desperate, and now ready to die, I cannot but weep with Heraclitus. When I see a priest say mass, with all those apish gestures, murmurings, &c. read the customs of the Jews' synagogue, or Mahometa Meschites, I must needs [6478]laugh at their folly, risum teneatis amici? but when I see them make matters of conscience of such toys and trifles, to adore the devil, to endanger their souls, to offer their children to their idols, &c. I must needs condole their misery. When I see two superstitious orders contend pro aris et focis, with such have and hold, de lana, caprina, some write such great volumes to no purpose, take so much pains to so small effect, their satires, invectives, apologies, dull and gross fictions; when I see grave learned men rail and scold like butter-women, methinks 'tis pretty sport, and fit [6479]for Calphurnius and Democritus to laugh at. But when I see so much blood spilt, so many murders and massacres, so many cruel battles fought, &c. 'tis a fitter subject for Heraclitus to lament. [6480]As Merlin when he sat by the lake side with Vortigern, and had seen the white and red dragon fight, before he began to interpret or to speak, in fletum prorupit, fell a weeping, and then proceeded to declare to the king what it meant. I should first pity and bewail this misery of human kind with some passionate preface, wishing mine eyes a fountain of tears, as Jeremiah did, and then to my task. For it is that great torture, that infernal plague of mortal men, omnium pestium pestilentissima superstitio, and able of itself alone to stand in opposition to all other plagues, miseries and calamities whatsoever; far more cruel, more pestiferous, more grievous, more general, more violent, of a greater extent. Other fears and sorrows, grievances of body and mind, are troublesome for the time; but this is for ever, eternal damnation, hell itself, a plague, a fire: an inundation hurts one province alone, and the loss may be recovered; but this superstition involves all the world almost, and can never be remedied. Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soul hath no rest; [6481]superstitione imbutus animus nunquam quietus esse potest, no peace, no quietness. True religion and superstition are quite opposite, longe diversa carnificina et pietas, as Lactantius describes, the one erects, the other dejects; illorum pietas, mera impietus; the one is an easy yoke, the other an intolerable burden, an absolute tyranny; the one a sure anchor, a haven; the other a tempestuous ocean; the one makes, the other mars; the one is wisdom, the other is folly, madness, indiscretion; the one unfeigned, the other a counterfeit; the one a diligent observer, the other an ape; one leads to heaven, the other to hell. But these differences will more evidently appear by their particular symptoms. What religion is, and of what parts it doth consist, every catechism will tell you, what symptoms it hath, and what effects it produceth: but for their superstitions, no tongue can tell them, no pen express, they are so many, so diverse, so uncertain, so inconstant, and so different from themselves. Tot mundi superstitiones quot coelo stellae, one saith, there be as many superstitions in the world, as there be stars in heaven, or devils themselves that are the first founders of them: with such ridiculous, absurd symptoms and signs, so many several rites, ceremonies, torments and vexations accompanying, as may well express and beseem the devil to be the author and maintainer of them. I will only point at some of them, ex ungue leonem guess at the rest, and those of the chief kinds of superstition, which beside us Christians now domineer and crucify the world, Gentiles, Mahometans, Jews, &c.

Of these symptoms some be general, some particular to each private sect: general to all, are, an extraordinary love and affection they bear and show to such as are of their own sect, and more than Vatinian hate to such as are opposite in religion, as they call it, or disagree from them in their superstitious rites, blind zeal, (which is as much a symptom as a cause,) vain fears, blind obedience, needless works, incredibilities, impossibilities, monstrous rites and ceremonies, wilfulness, blindness, obstinacy, &c. For the first, which is love and hate, as [6482]Montanus saith, nulla firmior amicitia quam quae contrahitur hinc; nulla discordia major, quam quae a religione fit; no greater concord, no greater discord than that which proceeds from religion, it is incredible to relate, did not our daily experience evince it, what factions, quam teterrimae factiones, (as [6483]Rich. Dinoth writes) have been of late for matters of religion in France, and what hurlyburlies all over Europe for these many years. Nihil est quod tam impotentur rapiat homines, quam suscepta de salute opinio; siquidem pro ea omnes gentes corpora et animas devovere solent, et arctissimo necessitudinis vinculo se invicem colligare. We are all brethren in Christ, servants of one Lord, members of one body, and therefore are or should be at least dearly beloved, inseparably allied in the greatest bond of love and familiarity, united partakers not only of the same cross, but coadjutors, comforters, helpers, at all times, upon all occasions: as they did in the primitive church, Acts the 5. they sold their patrimonies, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and many such memorable examples of mutual love we have had under the ten general persecutions, many since. Examples on the other side of discord none like, as our Saviour saith, he came therefore into the world to set father against son, &c. In imitation of whom the devil belike ([6484]nam superstitio irrepsit verae religionis imitatrix, superstition is still religion's ape, as in all other things, so in this) doth so combine and glue together his superstitious followers in love and affection, that they will live and die together: and what an innate hatred hath he still inspired to any other superstition opposite? How those old Romans were affected, those ten persecutions may be a witness, and that cruel executioner in Eusebius, aut lita aut morere, sacrifice or die. No greater hate, more continuate, bitter faction, wars, persecution in all ages, than for matters of religion, no such feral opposition, father against son, mother against daughter, husband against wife, city against city, kingdom against kingdom: as of old at Tentira and Combos:

[6485] "Immortale odium, et nunquam sanabile vulnus, Inde furor vulgo, quod numina vicinorum Odit uterque locus, quum solos credit habendos Esse deos quos ipse colat."———

"Immortal hate it breeds, a wound past cure, And fury to the commons still to endure: Because one city t' other's gods as vain Deride, and his alone as good maintain."

The Turks at this day count no better of us than of dogs, so they commonly call us giaours, infidels, miscreants, make that their main quarrel and cause of Christian persecution. If he will turn Turk, he shall be entertained as a brother, and had in good esteem, a Mussulman or a believer, which is a greater tie to them than any affinity or consanguinity. The Jews stick together like so many burrs; but as for the rest, whom they call Gentiles, they do hate and abhor, they cannot endure their Messiah should be a common saviour to us all, and rather, as [6486]Luther writes, "than they that now scoff at them, curse them, persecute and revile them, shall be coheirs and brethren with them, or have any part or fellowship with their Messiah, they would crucify their Messiah ten times over, and God himself, his angels, and all his creatures, if it were possible, though they endure a thousand hells for it." Such is their malice towards us. Now for Papists, what in a common cause, for the advancement of their religion they will endure, our traitors and pseudo-Catholics will declare unto us; and how bitter on the other side to their adversaries, how violently bent, let those Marian times record, as those miserable slaughters at Merindol and Cabriers, the Spanish inquisition, the Duke of Alva's tyranny in the Low Countries, the French massacres and civil wars. [6487]Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. "Such wickedness did religion persuade." Not there only, but all over Europe, we read of bloody battles, racks and wheels, seditions, factions, oppositions.

[6488] ———"obvia signis Signa, pares aquilas, et pila minantia pilis,"

Invectives and contentions. They had rather shake hands with a Jew, Turk, or, as the Spaniards do, suffer Moors to live amongst them, and Jews, than Protestants; "my name" (saith [6489]Luther) "is more odious to them than any thief or murderer." So it is with all heretics and schismatics whatsoever: and none so passionate, violent in their tenets, opinions, obstinate, wilful, refractory, peevish, factious, singular and stiff in defence of them; they do not only persecute and hate, but pity all other religions, account them damned, blind, as if they alone were the true church, they are the true heirs, have the fee-simple of heaven by a peculiar donation, 'tis entailed on them and their posterities, their doctrine sound, per funem aureum de coelo delapsa doctrinci, "let down from, heaven by a golden rope," they alone are to be saved, The Jews at this day are so incomprehensibly proud and churlish, saith [6490]Luther, that soli salvari, soli domini terrarum salutari volunt. And as [6491]Buxtorfius adds, "so ignorant and self-willed withal, that amongst their most understanding Rabbins you shall find nought but gross dotage, horrible hardness of heart, and stupendous obstinacy, in all their actions, opinions, conversations: and yet so zealous with all, that no man living can be more, and vindicate themselves for the elect people of GOD." 'Tis so with all other superstitious sects, Mahometans, Gentiles in China, and Tartary: our ignorant Papists, Anabaptists, Separatists, and peculiar churches of Amsterdam, they alone, and none but they can be saved. [6492]"Zealous" (as Paul saith, Rom. x. 2.) "without knowledge," they will endure any misery, any trouble, suffer and do that which the sunbeams will not endure to see, Religionis acti Furiis, all extremities, losses and dangers, take any pains, fast, pray, vow chastity, wilful poverty, forsake all and follow their idols, die a thousand deaths as some Jews did to Pilate's soldiers, in like case, exertos praebentes jugulos, et manifeste prae se ferentes, (as Josephus hath it) cariorem esse rita sibi legis patriae observationem, rather than abjure, or deny the least particle of that religion which their fathers profess, and they themselves have been brought up in, be it never so absurd, ridiculous, they will embrace it, and without farther inquiry or examination of the truth, though it be prodigiously false, they will believe it; they will take much more pains to go to hell, than we shall do to heaven. Single out the most ignorant of them, convince his understanding, show him his errors, grossness, and absurdities of his sect. Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris, he will not be persuaded. As those pagans told the Jesuits in Japona, [6493]they would do as their forefathers have done: and with Ratholde the Frisian Prince, go to hell for company, if most of their friends went thither: they will not be moved, no persuasion, no torture can stir them. So that papists cannot brag of their vows, poverty, obedience, orders, merits, martyrdoms, fastings, alms, good works, pilgrimages: much and more than all this, I shall show you, is, and hath been done by these superstitious Gentiles, Pagans, Idolaters and Jews: their blind zeal and idolatrous superstition in all kinds is much at one; little or no difference, and it is hard to say which is the greatest, which is the grossest. For if a man shall duly consider those superstitious rites amongst the Ethnics in Japan, the Bannians in Gusart, the Chinese idolaters, [6494]Americans of old, in Mexico especially, Mahometan priests, he shall find the same government almost, the same orders and ceremonies, or so like, that they may seem all apparently to be derived from some heathen spirit, and the Roman hierarchy no better than the rest. In a word, this is common to all superstition, there is nothing so mad and absurd, so ridiculous, impossible, incredible, which they will not believe, observe, and diligently perform, as much as in them lies; nothing so monstrous to conceive, or intolerable to put in practice, so cruel to suffer, which they will not willingly undertake. So powerful a thing is superstition. [6495]"O Egypt" (as Trismegistus exclaims) "thy religion is fables, and such as posterity will not believe." I know that in true religion itself, many mysteries are so apprehended alone by faith, as that of the Trinity, which Turks especially deride, Christ's incarnation, resurrection of the body at the last day, quod ideo credendum (saith Tertullian) quod incredible, &c. many miracles not to be controverted or disputed of. Mirari non rimari sapientia vera est, saith [6496]Gerhardus; et in divinis (as a good father informs us) quaedam credenda, quaedam admiranda, &c. some things are to be believed, embraced, followed with all submission and obedience, some again admired. Though Julian the apostate scoff at Christians in this point, quod captivemus intellectum in obsequium fidei, saying, that the Christian creed is like the Pythagorean Ipse dixit, we make our will and understanding too slavishly subject to our faith, without farther examination of the truth; yet as Saint Gregory truly answers, our creed is altioris praestantiae, and much more divine; and as Thomas will, pie consideranti semper suppetunt rationes, ostendentes credibilitatem in mysteriis supernaturalibus, we do absolutely believe it, and upon good reasons, for as Gregory well informeth us; Fides non habet meritum, ubi humana ratio quaerit experimentum; that faith hath no merit, is not worth the name of faith, that will not apprehend without a certain demonstration: we must and will believe God's word; and if we be mistaken or err in our general belief, as [6497]Richardus de Sancto Victore, vows he will say to Christ himself at the day of judgment; "Lord, if we be deceived, thou alone hast deceived us:" thus we plead. But for the rest I will not justify that pontificial consubstantiation, that which [6498]Mahometans and Jews justly except at, as Campanella confesseth, Atheismi triumphat. cap. 12. fol. 125, difficillimum dogma esse, nec aliud subjectum magis haereticorum blasphemiis, et stultis irrisionibus politicorum reperiri. They hold it impossible, Deum in pane manducari; and besides they scoff at it, vide gentem comedentem Deum suum, inquit quidam Maurus. [6499]Hunc Deum muscae et vermes irrident, quum ipsum polluunt et devorant, subditus est igni, aquae, et latrones furantur, pixidem auream humi prosternunt, et se tamen non defendit hic Deus. Qui fieri potest, ut sit integer in singulis hostiae particulis, idem corpus numero, tam multis locis, caelo, terra, &c. But he that shall read the [6500]Turks' Alcoran, the Jews' Talmud, and papists' golden legend, in the mean time will swear that such gross fictions, fables, vain traditions, prodigious paradoxes and ceremonies, could never proceed from any other spirit, than that of the devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies; and wonder withal how such wise men as have been of the Jews, such learned understanding men as Averroes, Avicenna, or those heathen philosophers, could ever be persuaded to believe, or to subscribe to the least part of them: aut fraudem non detegere: but that as [6501]Vanninus answers, ob publicae, potestatis formidinem allatrare philosophi non audebant, they durst not speak for fear of the law. But I will descend to particulars: read their several symptoms and then guess.

Of such symptoms as properly belong to superstition, or that irreligious religion, I may say as of the rest, some are ridiculous, some again feral to relate. Of those ridiculous, there can be no better testimony than the multitude of their gods, those absurd names, actions, offices they put upon them, their feasts, holy days, sacrifices, adorations, and the like. The Egyptians that pretended so great antiquity, 300 kings before Amasis: and as Mela writes, 13,000 years from the beginning of their chronicles, that bragged so much of their knowledge of old, for they invented arithmetic, astronomy, geometry: of their wealth and power, that vaunted of 20,000 cities: yet at the same time their idolatry and superstition was most gross: they worshipped, as Diodorus Siculus records, sun and moon under the name of Isis and Osiris, and after, such men as were beneficial to them, or any creature that did them good. In the city of Bubasti they adored a cat, saith Herodotus. Ibis and storks, an ox: (saith Pliny) [6502]leeks and onions, Macrobius,

[6503] "Porrum et caepe deos imponere nubibus ausi, Hos tu Nile deos colis."———

Scoffing [6504]Lucian in his vera Historia: which, as he confesseth himself, was not persuasively written as a truth, but in comical fashion to glance at the monstrous fictions and gross absurdities of writers and nations, to deride without doubt this prodigious Egyptian idolatry, feigns this story of himself: that when he had seen the Elysian fields, and was now coming away, Rhadamanthus gave him a mallow root, and bade him pray to that when he was in any peril or extremity; which he did accordingly; for when he came to Hydamordia in the island of treacherous women, he made his prayers to his root, and was instantly delivered. The Syrians, Chaldeans, had as many proper gods of their own invention; see the said Lucian de dea Syria. Morney cap. 22. de veritat. relig. Guliel. Stuckius [6505]Sacrorum Sacrificiorumque Gentil. descript. Peter Faber Semester, l. 3. c. 1, 2, 3. Selden de diis Syris, Purchas' pilgrimage, [6506] Rosinus of the Romans, and Lilius Giraldus of the Greeks. The Romans borrowed from all, besides their own gods, which were majorum and minorum gentium, as Varro holds, certain and uncertain; some celestial, select, and great ones, others indigenous and Semi-dei, Lares, Lemures, Dioscuri, Soteres, and Parastatae, dii tutelares amongst the Greeks: gods of all sorts, for all functions; some for the land, some for sea; some for heaven, some for hell; some for passions, diseases, some for birth, some for weddings, husbandry, woods, waters, gardens, orchards, &c. All actions and offices, Pax-Quies, Salus, Libertas, Felicitas, Strenua, Stimula, Horta, Pan, Sylvanus, Priapus, Flora, Cloacina, Stercutius, Febris, Pallor, Invidia, Protervia, Risus, Angerona, Volupia, Vacuna, Viriplaca, Veneranda, Pales, Neptunia, Doris, kings, emperors, valiant men that had done any good offices for them, they did likewise canonise and adore for gods, and it was usually done, usitatum apud antiquos, as [6507]Jac. Boissardus well observes, deificare homines qui beneficiis mortales juvarent, and the devil was still ready to second their intents, statim se ingessit illorum sepulchris, statuis, templis, aris, &c. he crept into their temples, statues, tombs, altars, and was ready to give oracles, cure diseases, do miracles, &c. as by Jupiter, Aesculapius, Tiresias, Apollo, Mopsus, Amphiaraus, &c. dii et Semi-dii. For so they were Semi-dii, demigods, some medii inter Deos et homines, as Max. [6508]Tyrius, the Platonist, ser. 26. et 27, maintains and justifies in many words. "When a good man dies, his body is buried, but his soul, ex homine daemon evadit, becomes forthwith a demigod, nothing disparaged with malignity of air, or variety of forms, rejoiceth, exults and sees that perfect beauty with his eyes. Now being deified, in commiseration he helps his poor friends here on earth, his kindred and allies, informs, succours, &c. punisheth those that are bad and do amiss, as a good genius to protect and govern mortal men appointed by the gods, so they will have it, ordaining some for provinces, some for private men, some for one office, some for another. Hector and Achilles assist soldiers to this day; Aesculapius all sick men, the Dioscuri seafaring men, &c. and sometimes upon occasion they show themselves. The Dioscuri, Hercules and Aesculapius, he saw himself (or the devil in his likeness) non somnians sed vigilans ipse vidi:" So far Tyrius. And not good men only do they thus adore, but tyrants, monsters, devils, (as [6509] Stuckius inveighs) Neros, Domitians, Heliogables, beastly women, and arrant whores amongst the rest. "For all intents, places, creatures, they assign gods;"

"Et domibus, tectis, thermis, et equis soleatis Assignare solent genios"———

saith Prudentius. Cuna for cradles, Diverra for sweeping houses, Nodina knots, Prema, Pramunda, Hymen, Hymeneus, for weddings; Comus the god of good fellows, gods of silence, of comfort, Hebe goddess of youth, Mena menstruarum, &c. male and female gods, of all ages, sexes and dimensions, with beards, without beards, married, unmarried, begot, not born at all, but, as Minerva, start out of Jupiter's head. Hesiod reckons up at least 30,000 gods, Varro 300 Jupiters. As Jeremy told them, their gods were to the multitude of cities;

"Quicquid humus, pelagus, coelum miserabile gignit Id dixere deos, colles, freta, flumina, flammas."

"Whatever heavens, sea, and land begat, Hills, seas, and rivers, God was this and that."

And which was most absurd, they made gods upon such ridiculous occasions; "As children make babies" (so saith [6510]Morneus), "their poets make gods," et quos adorant in templis, ludunt in Theatris, as Lactantius scoffs. Saturn, a man, gelded himself, did eat his own children, a cruel tyrant driven out of his kingdom by his son Jupiter, as good a god as himself, a wicked lascivious paltry king of Crete, of whose rapes, lusts, murders, villainies, a whole volume is too little to relate. Venus, a notorious strumpet, as common as a barber's chair, Mars, Adonis, Anchises' whore, is a great she-goddess, as well as the rest, as much renowned by their poets, with many such; and these gods so fabulously and foolishly made, ceremoniis, hymnis, et canticis celebrunt; their errors, luctus et gaudia, amores, iras, nuptias et liberorum procreationes ([6511]as Eusebius well taxeth), weddings, mirth and mournings, loves, angers, and quarrelling they did celebrate in hymns, and sing of in their ordinary songs, as it were publishing their villainies. But see more of their originals. When Romulus was made away by the sedition of the senators, to pacify the people, [6512]Julius Proculus gave out that Romulus was taken up by Jupiter into heaven, and therefore to be ever after adored for a god amongst the Romans. Syrophanes of Egypt had one only son, whom he dearly loved; he erected his statue in his house, which his servants did adorn with garlands, to pacify their master's wrath when he was angry, so by little and little he was adored for a god. This did Semiramis for her husband Belus, and Adrian the emperor by his minion Antinous. Flora was a rich harlot in Rome, and for that she made the commonwealth her heir, her birthday was solemnised long after; and to make it a more plausible holiday, they made her goddess of flowers, and sacrificed to her amongst the rest. The matrons of Rome, as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus relates, because at their entreaty Coriolanus desisted from his wars, consecrated a church Fortunes muliebri; and [6513]Venus Barbata had a temple erected, for that somewhat was amiss about hair, and so the rest. The citizens [6514]of Alabanda, a small town in Asia Minor, to curry favour with the Romans (who then warred in Greece with Perseus of Macedon, and were formidable to these parts), consecrated a temple to the City of Rome, and made her a goddess, with annual games and sacrifices; so a town of houses was deified, with shameful flattery of the one side to give, and intolerable arrogance on the other to accept, upon so vile and absurd an occasion. Tully writes to Atticus, that his daughter Tulliola might be made a goddess, and adored as Juno and Minerva, and as well she deserved it. Their holy days and adorations were all out as ridiculous; those Lupercals of Pan, Florales of Flora, Bona dea, Anna Perenna, Saturnals, &c., as how they were celebrated, with what lascivious and wanton gestures, bald ceremonies, [6515]by what bawdy priests, how they hang their noses over the smoke of sacrifices, saith [6516]Lucian, and lick blood like flies that was spilled about the altars. Their carved idols, gilt images of wood, iron, ivory, silver, brass, stone, olim truncus eram, &c., were most absurd, as being their own workmanship; for as Seneca notes, adorant ligneos deos, et fabros interim qui fecerunt, contemnunt, they adore work, contemn the workman; and as Tertullian follows it, Si homines non essent diis propitii, non essent dii, had it not been for men, they had never been gods, but blocks, and stupid statues in which mice, swallows, birds make their nests, spiders their webs, and in their very mouths laid their excrements. Those images, I say, were all out as gross as the shapes in which they did represent them: Jupiter with a ram's head, Mercury a dog's, Pan like a goat, Heccate with three heads, one with a beard, another without; see more in Carterius and [6517]Verdurius of their monstrous forms and ugly pictures: and, which was absurder yet, they told them these images came from heaven, as that of Minerva in her temple at Athens, quod e coelo cecidisse credebant accolae, saith Pausanias. They formed some like storks, apes, bulls, and yet seriously believed: and that which was impious and abominable, they made their gods notorious whoremasters, incestuous Sodomites (as commonly they were all, as well as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune, &c.), thieves, slaves, drudges (for Apollo and Neptune made tiles in Phrygia), kept sheep, Hercules emptied stables, Vulcan a blacksmith, unfit to dwell upon the earth for their villainies, much less in heaven, as [6518]Mornay well saith, and yet they gave them out to be such; so weak and brutish, some to whine, lament, and roar, as Isis for her son and Cenocephalus, as also all her weeping priests; Mars in Homer to be wounded, vexed; Venus ran away crying, and the like; than which what can be more ridiculous? Nonne ridiculum lugere quod colas, vel colere quod lugeas? (which [6519]Minutius objects) Si dii, cur plangitis? si mortui, cur adoratis? that it is no marvel if [6520]Lucian, that adamantine persecutor of superstition, and Pliny could so scoff at them and their horrible idolatry as they did; if Diagoras took Hercules' image, and put it under his pot to seethe his pottage, which was, as he said, his 13th labour. But see more of their fopperies in Cypr. 4. tract, de Idol. varietat. Chrysostom advers. Gentil. Arnobius adv. Gentes. Austin, de civ. dei. Theodoret. de curat. Graec. affect. Clemens Alexandrinus, Minutius Felix, Eusebius, Lactantius, Stuckius, &c. Lamentable, tragical, and fearful those symptoms are, that they should be so far forth affrighted with their fictitious gods, as to spend the goods, lives, fortunes, precious time, best days in their honour, to [6521]sacrifice unto them, to their inestimable loss, such hecatombs, so many thousand sheep, oxen with gilded horns, goats, as [6522]Croesus, king of Lydia, [6523] Marcus Julianus, surnamed ob crebras hostias Victimarius, et Tauricremus, and the rest of the Roman emperors usually did with such labour and cost; and not emperors only and great ones, pro communi bono, were at this charge, but private men for their ordinary occasions. Pythagoras offered a hundred oxen for the invention of a geometrical problem, and it was an ordinary thing to sacrifice in [6524]Lucian's time, "a heifer for their good health, four oxen for wealth, a hundred for a kingdom, nine bulls for their safe return from Troja to Pylus," &c. Every god almost had a peculiar sacrifice—the Sun horses, Vulcan fire, Diana a white hart, Venus a turtle, Ceres a hog, Proserpine a black lamb, Neptune a bull (read more in [6525] Stuckius at large), besides sheep, cocks, corals, frankincense, to their undoings, as if their gods were affected with blood or smoke. "And surely" ([6526]saith he) "if one should but repeat the fopperies of mortal men, in their sacrifices, feasts, worshipping their gods, their rites and ceremonies, what they think of them, of their diet, houses, orders, &c., what prayers and vows they make; if one should but observe their absurdity and madness, he would burst out a laughing, and pity their folly." For what can be more absurd than their ordinary prayers, petitions, [6527]requests, sacrifices, oracles, devotions? of which we have a taste in Maximus Tyrius, serm. 1. Plato's Alcibiades Secundus, Persius Sat. 2. Juvenal. Sat. 10. there likewise exploded, Mactant opimas et pingues hostias deo quasi esurienti, profundunt vina tanquam sitienti, lumina accendunt velut in tenebris agenti (Lactantius, lib. 2. cap. 6). As if their gods were hungry, athirst, in the dark, they light candles, offer meat and drink. And what so base as to reveal their counsels and give oracles, e viscerum sterquiliniis, out of the bowels and excremental parts of beasts? sordidos deos Varro truly calls them therefore, and well he might. I say nothing of their magnificent and sumptuous temples, those majestical structures: to the roof of Apollo Didymeus' temple, ad branchidas, as [6528]Strabo writes, a thousand oaks did not suffice. Who can relate the glorious splendour, and stupend magnificence, the sumptuous building of Diana at Ephesus, Jupiter Ammon's temple in Africa, the Pantheon at Rome, the Capitol, the Sarapium at Alexandria, Apollo's temple at Daphne in the suburbs of Antioch. The great temple at Mexico so richly adorned, and so capacious (for 10,000 men might stand in it at once), that fair Pantheon of Cusco, described by Acosta in his Indian History, which eclipses both Jews and Christians. There were in old Jerusalem, as some write, 408 synagogues; but new Cairo reckons up (if [6529]Radzivilus may be believed) 6800 mosques; Fez 400, whereof 50 are most magnificent, like St. Paul's in London. Helena built 300 fair churches in the Holy Land, but one Bassa hath built 400 mosques. The Mahometans have 1000 monks in a monastery; the like saith Acosta of Americans; Riccius of the Chinese, for men and women, fairly built; and more richly endowed some of them, than Arras in Artois, Fulda in Germany, or St. Edmund's-Bury in England with us: who can describe those curious and costly statues, idols, images, so frequently mentioned in Pausanias? I conceal their donaries, pendants, other offerings, presents, to these their fictitious gods daily consecrated. [6530]Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, sent two statues of pure gold to Apollo at Delphos. [6531]Croesus, king of Lydia dedicated a hundred golden tiles in the same place with a golden altar: no man came empty-handed to their shrines. But these are base offerings in respect; they offered men themselves alive. The Leucadians, as Strabo writes, sacrificed every year a man, averruncandae, deorum irae, causa, to pacify their gods, de montis praecipitio dejecerent, &c. and they did voluntarily undergo it. The Decii did so sacrifice, Diis manibus; Curtius did leap into the gulf. Were they not all strangely deluded to go so far to their oracles, to be so gulled by them, both in war and peace, as Polybius relates (which their argurs, priests, vestal virgins can witness), to be so superstitious, that they would rather lose goods and lives than omit any ceremonies, or offend their heathen gods? Nicias, that generous and valiant captain of the Greeks, overthrew the Athenian navy, by reason of his too much superstition, [6532] because the augurs told him it was ominous to set sail from the haven of Syracuse whilst the moon was eclipsed; he tarried so long till his enemies besieged him, he and all his army were overthrown. The [6533]Parthians of old were so sottish in this kind, they would rather lose a victory, nay lose their own lives, than fight in the night, 'twas against their religion. The Jews would make no resistance on the Sabbath, when Pompeius besieged Jerusalem; and some Jewish Christians in Africa, set upon by the Goths, suffered themselves upon the same occasion to be utterly vanquished. The superstition of the Dibrenses, a bordering town in Epirus, besieged by the Turks, is miraculous almost to report. Because a dead dog was flung into the only fountain which the city had, they would die of thirst all, rather than drink of that [6534]unclean water, and yield up the city upon any conditions. Though the praetor and chief citizens began to drink first, using all good persuasions, their superstition was such, no saying would serve, they must all forthwith die or yield up the city. Vix ausum ipse credere (saith [6535]Barletius) tantam superstitionem, vel affirmare levissimam hanc causam tantae rei vel magis ridiculam, quum non dubitem risum potius quum admirationem posteris excitaturam. The story was too ridiculous, he was ashamed to report it, because he thought nobody would believe it. It is stupend to relate what strange effects this idolatry and superstition hath brought forth of the latter years in the Indies and those bordering parts: [6536]in what feral shapes the [6537]devil is adored, ne quid mali intentent, as they say; for in the mountains betwixt Scanderoon and Aleppo, at this day, there are dwelling a certain kind of people called Coords, coming of the race of the ancient Parthians, who worship the devil, and allege this reason in so doing: God is a good man and will do no harm, but the devil is bad and must be pleased, lest he hurt them. It is wonderful to tell how the devil deludes them, how he terrifies them, how they offer men and women sacrifices unto him, a hundred at once, as they did infants in Crete to Saturn of old, the finest children, like Agamemnon's Iphigenia, &c. At [6538]Mexico, when the Spaniards first overcame them, they daily sacrificed viva hominum corda e viventium corporibus extracta, the hearts of men yet living, 20,000 in a year (Acosta lib. 5. cap. 20) to their idols made of flour and men's blood, and every year 6000 infants of both sexes: and as prodigious to relate, [6539]how they bury their wives with husbands deceased, 'tis fearful to report, and harder to believe,

[6540] "Nam certamen habent laethi quae viva sequatur Conjugium, pudor, est non licuisse mori,"

and burn them alive, best goods, servants, horses, when a grandee dies, [6541]twelve thousand at once amongst the Tartar's, when a great Cham departs, or an emperor in America: how they plague themselves, which abstain from all that hath life, like those old Pythagoreans, with immoderate fastings, [6542]as the Bannians about Surat, they of China, that for superstition's sake never eat flesh nor fish all their lives, never marry, but live in deserts and by-places, and some pray to their idols twenty-four hours together without any intermission, biting of their tongues when they have done, for devotion's sake. Some again are brought to that madness by their superstitious priests (that tell them such vain stories of immortality, and the joys of heaven in that other life), [6543] that many thousands voluntarily break their own necks, as Cleombrotus Amborciatus, auditors of old, precipitate themselves, that they may participate of that unspeakable happiness in the other world. One poisons, another strangles himself, and the King of China had done as much, deluded with the vain hope, had he not been detained by his servant. But who can sufficiently tell of their several superstitions, vexations, follies, torments? I may conclude with [6544]Possevinus, Religifacit asperos mites, homines e feris; superstitio ex hominibus feras, religion makes wild beasts civil, superstition makes wise men beasts and fools; and the discreetest that are, if they give way to it, are no better than dizzards; nay more, if that of Plotinus be true, is unus religionis scopus, ut ei quem colimus similes fiamus, that is the drift of religion to make us like him whom we worship: what shall be the end of idolaters, but to degenerate into stocks and stones? of such as worship these heathen gods, for dii gentium daemonia, [6545]but to become devils themselves? 'Tis therefore exitiosus error, et maxime periculosus, a most perilous and dangerous error of all others, as [6546]Plutarch holds, turbulenta passio hominem consternans, a pestilent, a troublesome passion, that utterly undoeth men. Unhappy superstition, [6547]Pliny calls it, morte non finitur, death takes away life, but not superstition. Impious and ignorant are far more happy than they which are superstitious, no torture like to it, none so continuate, so general, so destructive, so violent.

In this superstitious row, Jews for antiquity may go next to Gentiles: what of old they have done, what idolatries they have committed in their groves and high places, what their Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Essei, and such sectaries have maintained, I will not so much as mention: for the present, I presume no nation under heaven can be more sottish, ignorant, blind, superstitious, wilful, obstinate, and peevish, tiring themselves with vain ceremonies to no purpose; he that shall but read their Rabbins' ridiculous comments, their strange interpretation of scriptures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales, which they steadfastly believe, will think they be scarce rational creatures; their foolish [6548]customs, when they rise in the morning, and how they prepare themselves to prayer, to meat, with what superstitious washings, how to their Sabbath, to their other feasts, weddings, burials, &c. Last of all, the expectation of their Messiah, and those figments, miracles, vain pomp that shall attend him, as how he shall terrify the Gentiles, and overcome them by new diseases; how Michael the archangel shall sound his trumpet, how he shall gather all the scattered Jews in the Holy Land, and there make them a great banquet, [6549] "Wherein shall be all the birds, beasts, fishes, that ever God made, a cup of wine that grew in Paradise, and that hath been kept in Adam's cellar ever since." At the first course shall be served in that great ox in Job iv. 10., "that every day feeds on a thousand hills," Psal. 1. 10., that great Leviathan, and a great bird, that laid an egg so big, [6550]"that by chance tumbling out of the nest, it knocked down three hundred tall cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned one hundred and sixty villages:" this bird stood up to the knees in the sea, and the sea was so deep, that a hatchet would not fall to the bottom in seven years: of their Messiah's [6551]wives and children; Adam and Eve, &c., and that one stupend fiction amongst the rest: when a Roman prince asked of rabbi Jehosua ben Hanania, why the Jews' God was compared to a lion; he made answer, he compared himself to no ordinary lion, but to one in the wood Ela, which, when he desired to see, the rabbin prayed to God he might, and forthwith the lion set forward. [6552] "But when he was four hundred miles from Rome he so roared that all the great-bellied women in Rome made abortions, the city walls fell down, and when he came a hundred miles nearer, and roared the second time, their teeth fell out of their heads, the emperor himself fell down dead, and so the lion went back." With an infinite number of such lies and forgeries, which they verily believe, feed themselves with vain hope, and in the mean time will by no persuasions be diverted, but still crucify their souls with a company of idle ceremonies, live like slaves and vagabonds, will not be relieved or reconciled.

Mahometans are a compound of Gentiles, Jews, and Christians, and so absurd in their ceremonies, as if they had taken that which is most sottish out of every one of them, full of idle fables in their superstitious law, their Alcoran itself a gallimaufry of lies, tales, ceremonies, traditions, precepts, stolen from other sects, and confusedly heaped up to delude a company of rude and barbarous clowns. As how birds, beasts, stones, saluted Mahomet when he came from Mecca, the moon came down from heaven to visit him, [6553]how God sent for him, spake to him, &c., with a company of stupend figments of the angels, sun, moon, and stars, &c. Of the day of judgment, and three sounds to prepare to it, which must last fifty thousand years of Paradise, which wholly consists in coeundi et comedendi voluptate, and pecorinis hominibus scriptum, bestialis beatitudo, is so ridiculous, that Virgil, Dante, Lucian, nor any poet can be more fabulous. Their rites and ceremonies are most vain and superstitious, wine and swine's flesh are utterly forbidden by their law, [6554]they must pray five times a day; and still towards the south, wash before and after all their bodies over, with many such. For fasting, vows, religious orders, peregrinations, they go far beyond any papists, [6555]they fast a month together many times, and must not eat a bit till sun be set. Their kalendars, dervises, and torlachers, &c. are more [6556]abstemious some of them, than Carthusians, Franciscans, Anchorites, forsake all, live solitary, fare hard, go naked, &c. [6557]Their pilgrimages are as far as to the river [6558]Ganges (which the Gentiles of those tracts likewise do), to wash themselves, for that river as they hold hath a sovereign virtue to purge them of all sins, and no man can be saved that hath not been washed in it. For which reason they come far and near from the Indies; Maximus gentium omnium confluxus est; and infinite numbers yearly resort to it. Others go as far as Mecca to Mahomet's tomb, which journey is both miraculous and meritorious. The ceremonies of flinging stones to stone the devil, of eating a camel at Cairo by the way; their fastings, their running till they sweat, their long prayers, Mahomet's temple, tomb, and building of it, would ask a whole volume to dilate: and for their pains taken in this holy pilgrimage, all their sins are forgiven, and they reputed for so many saints. And diverse of them with hot bricks, when they return, will put out their eyes, [6559]"that they never after see any profane thing, bite out their tongues," &c. They look for their prophet Mahomet as Jews do for their Messiah. Read more of their customs, rites, ceremonies, in Lonicerus Turcic. hist. tom. 1. from the tenth to the twenty-fourth chapter. Bredenbachius, cap. 4, 5, 6. Leo Afer, lib. 1. Busbequius Sabellicus, Purchas, lib. 3. cap. 3, et 4, 5. Theodorus Bibliander, &c. Many foolish ceremonies you shall find in them; and which is most to be lamented, the people are generally so curious in observing of them, that if the least circumstance be omitted, they think they shall be damned, 'tis an irremissible offence, and can hardly be forgiven. I kept in my house amongst my followers (saith Busbequius, sometime the Turk's orator in Constantinople) a Turkey boy, that by chance did eat shellfish, a meat forbidden by their law, but the next day when he knew what he had done, he was not only sick to cast and vomit, but very much troubled in mind, would weep and [6560]grieve many days after, torment himself for his foul offence. Another Turk being to drink a cup of wine in his cellar, first made a huge noise and filthy faces, [6561]"to warn his soul, as he said, that it should not be guilty of that foul fact which he was to commit." With such toys as these are men kept in awe, and so cowed, that they dare not resist, or offend the least circumstance of their law, for conscience' sake misled by superstition, which no human edict otherwise, no force of arms, could have enforced.

In the last place are pseudo-Christians, in describing of whose superstitious symptoms, as a mixture of the rest, I may say that which St. Benedict once saw in a vision, one devil in the marketplace, but ten in a monastery, because there was more work; in populous cities they would swear and forswear, lie, falsify, deceive fast enough of themselves, one devil could circumvent a thousand; but in their religious houses a thousand devils could scarce tempt one silly monk. All the principal devils, I think, busy themselves in subverting Christians; Jews, Gentiles, and Mahometans, are extra caulem, out of the fold, and need no such attendance, they make no resistance, [6562]eos enim pulsare negligit, quos quieto jure possidere se sentit, they are his own already: but Christians have that shield of faith, sword of the Spirit to resist, and must have a great deal of battery before they can be overcome. That the devil is most busy amongst us that are of the true church, appears by those several oppositions, heresies, schisms, which in all ages he hath raised to subvert it, and in that of Rome especially, wherein Antichrist himself now sits and plays his prize. This mystery of iniquity began to work even in the Apostles' time, many Antichrists and heretics' were abroad, many sprung up since, many now present, and will be to the world's end, to dementate men's minds, to seduce and captivate their souls. Their symptoms I know not how better to express, than in that twofold division, of such as lead, and are led. Such as lead are heretics, schismatics, false prophets, impostors, and their ministers: they have some common symptoms, some peculiar. Common, as madness, folly, pride, insolency, arrogancy, singularity, peevishness, obstinacy, impudence, scorn and contempt of all other sects: Nullius addicti jurare in verba magistri; [6563]they will approve of nought but what they first invent themselves, no interpretation good but what their infallible spirit dictates: none shall be in secundis, no not in tertiis, they are only wise, only learned in the truth, all damned but they and their followers, caedem scripturarum faciunt ad materiam suam, saith Tertullian, they make a slaughter of Scriptures, and turn it as a nose of wax to their own ends. So irrefragable, in the mean time, that what they have once said, they must and will maintain, in whole tomes, duplications, triplications, never yield to death, so self-conceited, say what you can. As [6564]Bernard (erroneously some say) speaks of P. Aliardus, omnes patres sic, atque ego sic. Though all the Fathers, Councils, the whole world contradict it, they care not, they are all one: and as [6565] Gregory well notes "of such as are vertiginous, they think all turns round and moves, all err: when as the error is wholly in their own brains." Magallianus, the Jesuit, in his Comment on 1 Tim. xvi. 20, and Alphonsus de castro lib. 1. adversus haereses, gives two more eminent notes or probable conjectures to know such men by, (they might have taken themselves by the noses when they said it) [6566]"First they affect novelties and toys, and prefer falsehood before truth; [6567]secondly, they care not what they say, that which rashness and folly hath brought out, pride afterward, peevishness and contumacy shall maintain to the last gasp." Peculiar symptoms are prodigious paradoxes, new doctrines, vain phantasms, which are many and diverse as they themselves. [6568]Nicholaites of old, would have wives in common: Montanists will not marry at all, nor Tatians, forbidding all flesh, Severians wine; Adamians go naked, [6569]because Adam did so in Paradise; and some [6570]barefoot all their lives, because God, Exod. iii. and Joshua v. bid Moses so to do; and Isaiah xx. was bid put off his shoes; Manichees hold that Pythagorean transmigration of souls from men to beasts; [6571]"the Circumcellions in Africa, with a mad cruelty made away themselves, some by fire, water, breaking their necks, and seduced others to do the like, threatening some if they did not," with a thousand such; as you may read in [6572]Austin (for there were fourscore and eleven heresies in his times, besides schisms and smaller factions) Epiphanius, Alphonsus de Castro, Danaeus, Gab, Prateolus, &c. Of prophets, enthusiasts and impostors, our Ecclesiastical stories afford many examples; of Elias and Christs, as our [6573]Eudo de stellis, a Briton in King Stephen's time, that went invisible, translated himself from one to another in a moment, fed thousands with good cheer in the wilderness, and many such; nothing so common as miracles, visions, revelations, prophecies. Now what these brain-sick heretics once broach, and impostors set on foot, be it never so absurd, false, and prodigious, the common people will follow and believe. It will run along like murrain in cattle, scab in sheep. Nulla scabies, as [6574]he said, superstitione scabiosior; as he that is bitten with a mad dog bites others, and all in the end become mad; either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope and fear, the giddy-headed multitude will embrace it, and without further examination approve it.