3 2 sumptuous building of Diana at Ephesus, Jupiter Ammons temple in Africke, the Pantheon at Rome, the Capitoll, the Serapium at Alexandria, Apollos temple at Daphne in the suburbs of Antioch. The great temple at Mexico so richly adorned, and so capacious (for 10000 men might stand in it at once) that faire pantheon of Cusco, described by Acosta in his Indian History, which ecclipses both Jewes and Christians. There were in old Jerusalem as some write, 408 synagogues; but new Cairo reckons up (if 'Radzivilus may be beleeved) 6800 meskites. Fessa 400, whereof 50 are most magnificent, like Saint Pauls in London. Helena built 300 faire churches in the holy land, but one Bassa hath built 400 meskites. The Mahometans have 1000 monkes in a monastery; the like saith Acosta of Americans; Riccius of the Chineses, for men and women, fairly built, and more richly endowed some of them, then Arras in Artois, Fulda in Germany, or Saint Edmunds-Bury in England with us. Who can describe those curious and costlie statues, idols, images, so frequently mentioned in Pausanias? I conceal their donaries, pendants, other offerings, presents, to these their fictitious gods daily consecrated. Alexander, the son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, sent two statues of pure gold to Apollo at Delphos. Croesus, king of Lydia, dedicated an 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 yeer a man, averruncandæ Deorum iræ causa, to pacifie their gods; de montis præcipitio dejecerunt, &c. and they did voluntarily undergoe it. The Decii did so sacrifice Diis manibus; Curtius did leap into the gulfe. 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 augures, priests, vestall virgins can witness) to be so superstitious, that they would rather lose goods and lives, then omit any ceremonies or offend their heathen gods? Nicias, that generous and valiant captain of the Greekes, overthrew the Athenian navy, by reason of his too much superstition, because the augures told him it was ominous to set sail from the haven of Syracuse whilest the moone was ecclipsed, he tarried so long till his enemies besieged him, he and all his army was overthrown. The Parthians of old were so sottish in this kinde, they would rather lose a victorie, nay lose their own lives, then fight in the night; 'twas against their religion. The Jewes would make no resistance on the sabbath, when Pompeius ♦ Boterus polit. 5 1 Peregr. Hierosol. lib. 2. cap. 16. 2 Solinus. 3 Herodotus. ram. 2 besieged Jerusalem; and some Jewish Christians in Africke, set upon by the Gothes, suffered themselves, upon the same occasion, to be utterly vanquished. The superstition of the Dibrenses, a bordering town in Epirus, besieged by the Turkes, is miraculous almost to report. Because a dead dog was flung into the only fountain which the citie had, they would dye of thirst all, rather then drink of that 'unclean water, and yeeld up the citie upon any conditions. Though the prætor and chief citizens began to drink first, using all good perswasions, their superstition was such, no saying would serve, they must all forthwith dye or yeeld up the citie. Vix ausim ipse credere (saith. Barletius) tantam superstitionem, vel affirmare levissimam hanc causam tantæ rei, vel magis ridiculam, quum non dubitem risum potius quam admirationem posteris excitatuThe story was too ridiculous, he was ashamed to report it, because he thought no body would beleeve it. It is stupend to relate what strange effects this idolatry and superstition hath brought forth of the latter yeers in the Indies and those bordering parts: in what ferall shapes the 'divel is adored, ne quid mali intentet, as they say; for in the mountains betwixt Scanderone and Aleppo, at this day, there are dwelling a certaine kinde of people called Coordes, coming of the race of the ancient Parthians, who worship the divel, and alledge this reason in so doing; God is a good man and will do no harm, but the divel is bad and must be pleased, lest he hurt them. It is wonderful to tell how the divel deludes them, how he terrifies them, how they offer men and women sacrifices unto him, an hundred at once, as they did infants in Crete to Saturne of old, the finest children, like Agamemnons Iphigenia, &c. At Mexico, when the Spaniards first overcame them, they daily sacrificed viva hominum corda e viventium corporibus extracta, the hearts of men yet living, 20000 in a yeer (Acosta lib. 5. cap. 20.) to their idols made of flowre and mens bloud; and every yeer six thousand infants of both sexes: and, as prodigious to relate how they burie their wives with husbands deceased, 'tis fearfull to report, and harder to beleeve. 5 "Nam certamen habent lethi quæ viva sequatur and burn them alive, best goods, servants, horses, when a grandie dies; 12000 at once amongst the Tartars when a 8 1 They were of the Greek church. 2 Lib. 5. de gestis Scanderbegis. 3 In templis immania idolorum monstra conspiciuntur, marmorea, lignea, lutea, &c. Riccius. + Deum enim placare non est opus, quia non nocet; sed dæ 5 Fer Cortesius. monem sacrificiis placant, &c. 6 M. Polus. Lod. 2 1 great Cham departs, or an emperour in America: how they plague themselves, which abstaine from all that hath life, like those old Pythagoreans; with immoderate fastings, as the Bannians about Surat; they of China, that for superstitions sake never eat flesh nor fish all their lives, never marry, but live in deserts and by-places, and some pray to their idols 24 hours together, without any intermission, biting of their tongues when they have done, for devotions sake. Some again are brought to that madness by their superstitious priests, (that tell them such vain stories of immortality, and the joyes of heaven in that other life) that many thousands voluntarily break their own neckes, as Cleombrotus Amborciatus' auditors of old, precipitate themselves, that they may participate of that unspeakable happiness in the other world. One poysons, another strangleth himself; and the king of China had done as much, deluded with this vaine hope, had he not been detained by his servant. But who can sufficiently tell of their severall superstitions, vexations, follies, torments? I may conclude with Possevinus, Religio facit asperos mites, homines e feris; superstitio ex hominibus feras, Religion makes wilde beasts civil, superstition makes wise men beasts and fools; and the discreetest that are, if they give way to it, are no better than dizards; nay more, if that of Plotinus be true, is unus religionis scopus, ut ei quem colimus similes fiamus, that's the drift of religion to make us like him whom we worship: what shall be the end of idolaters, but to degenerate into stockes and stones? of such as worship these heathen Gods, (for Dii gentium dæmonia) but to become divels themselves? "Tis therefore exitiosus error, et maxime periculosus, a most perilous and dangerous errour of all others, as ' Plutarch holds, turbulenta passio hominem consternans, a pestilent, a troublesome passion, that utterly undoeth men. Unhappy superstition, Pliny cals it, morte non finitur, death takes away life, but not superstition. Impious and ignorant men are far more happy then they which are superstitious, no torture like to it, none so continuate, so generall, so destructive, so violent. 3 6 4 5 In this superstitious row, Jewes for antiquitie may go next to Gentiles; what of old they have done, what idolatries they 1 Epist. Jesuit. anno. 1549. a Xaverio et sociis. Idemque Riccius expedit. ad Sinas, 1. 1. Jejunatores apud eos toto die carnibus abstinent et piscibus ob religionem, nocte et die idola colentes; nusquam egredientes. 2 Ad immortalitatem morte aspirant summi magistratus, &c. Et multi mortales hac insaniâ, et præpostero immortalitatis studio laborant, et misere pereunt; rex ipse clam venenum hausisset, nisi a servo fuisset detentus. 3 Cantione in lib. 10. Bodini de repub. fol. 111. 4 Quin ipsius diaboli ut nequitiam referant. 5 Lib. de superstit. 6 Hominibus vitæ finis mors, non autem superstitionis; profert hæc suos terminos ultra vitæ finem. 2 1 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, blinde, superstitious, willful, obstinate, and peevish, tyring themselves with vaine ceremonies to no purpose; he that shall but reade their Rabbins ridiculous Comments, their strange interpretation of Scriptures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales, which they stedfastly beleeve, will think they be scarse rational creatures; their foolish customes, 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 Messias, and those figments, miracles, vaine pompe that shall attend him; as how he shall terrifie the gentiles, and overcome them by new diseases; how Michael the Archangel shall sound his trumpet, how he shall gather all the scattered Jewes into the holy land, and there make them a great banquet, 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 oxe in Psal. 50. 10. that every day feeds on a thousand hils; Job 41. that great Leviathan; and a great bird that laid an egge so big, that by chance tumbling out of the nest, it knockt down 300 tall cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned 160 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 yeers. Of their Messias wives and children; Adam and Eve, &c. and that one stupend fiction among the rest: When a Roman prince asked of Rabbi Jehosua ben Hanania, why the Jewes 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 pray'd to God he might, and forthwith the lion set forward; But when he was 400 miles from Rome, he so roared that all the great-bellied women in Rome made aborts; the citie walls fell down; and when he came an hundred miles nearer, and roared the second time, their teeth fell out of their heads, the em 3 5 1 Buxtorfius, Synagog. Jud. c. 4. Inter precandum nemo pediculos attingat, vel pulicem, aut per guttur inferius ventum emittas, &c. Id. c. 5. et seq. cap. 36. 2 Illic omnia animalia, pisces, aves, quos Deus unquam creavit mactabuntur, et vinum generosum, &c. 3 Cujus lapsu cedri altissimi 300 dejecti sunt, quumque lapsu ovum fuerat confractum, pagi 160 inde submersi, et alluvione inundati. 4Every king in the world shall send him one of his daughters to be his wife, because it is written Psal. 45. 10. kings daughters shall attend on him, &c. 5 Quum quadringentis adhuc milliaribus ab imperatore leo hic abesset, tam fortiter rugiebat, ut mulieres Romanæ abortierint omnes, murique, &c. perour himself fell down dead, and so the lion went back. With an infinite number of such lyes and forgeries, which they verily beleeve, feed themselves with vain hope, and in the mean time will by no perswasions be diverted, but still crucifie their soules with a company of idle ceremonies, live like slaves and vagabonds, will not be relieved or reconciled. Mahometans are a compound of Gentiles, Jewes, 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 it self a gallimaufrie of lyes, tales, ceremonies, traditions, precepts, stole from other sectes, and confusedly heaped up, to delude a company of rude and barbarous clownes. As how birds, beasts, stones, saluted Mahomet when he came from Mecha, the moone came downe from heaven to visit him; 'how God sent for him, spake to him, &c. with a company of stupend figments of the angels, sun, moone, and stars, &c. Of the day of judgement, and three sounds to prepare to it, which must last 50000 yeers; of Paradise, which wholly consists in coeundi et comedendi voluptate, and pecorinis hominibus scriptum, bestialis beatitudo, is so ridiculous, that Virgil, Dantes, Lucian, nor any poet can be more fabulous. Their rites and ceremonies are most vaine and superstitious; wine and swines flesh are utter forbidden by their law; they must pray five times a day; and still towards the south; wash before and after, all their bodies over, with many such. fasting, vowes, religious orders, peregrinations, they go far beyond any papists. They fast a month together many times, and must not eat a bit till sun be set. Their Kalenders, Dervises, and Torlachers, &c. are more abstemious, some of them, then Carthusians, Franciscans, Anchorites; forsake all, live solitary, fare hard, goe naked, &c. Their pilgrimages are as far as to the river Ganges (which the Gentiles of those tracts likewise do) to wash themselves; for that river, as they hold, hath a soveraign vertue 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 6 4 2 For 1 Strozius Cicogna, omnif. mag. lib. 1. c. 1. Putida multa recenset ex Alcorano, de cœlo, stellis, angelis, Lonicerus, c. 21, 22. 1. 1. 2 Quinquies in die orare Turcæ tenentur ad meridiem. Bredenbachius, cap. 5. 3 In quolibet anno mensem integrum jejunant interdiu, nec comedentes nec bibentes, &c. 4 Nullis unquam multi per totam ætatem carnibus vescuntur. Leo Afer. 5 Lonicerus, tom. 1. cap. 17, 18. 6 Gotardus Arthus. ca. 33. hist. orient. India. Opinio est expiatorium esse Gangem; et nec mundum ab omni peccato nec salvum fieri posse, qui non hoc flumine se abluat: quam ob caussam ex totâ Indiâ, &c. |