of in their ordinary songs, as it were publishing their villanies. But see more of their originals. When Romulus was made away by the sedition of the Senators, to pacifie the people, *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 pacifie 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 Emperour by his minion Antinous. Flora was a rich harlot in Rome, and for that she made the Common-wealth her heir, her birth day was solemnized 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 Halicarnassæus relates, because at their entreaty Coriolanus desisted from his Wars, consecrated a Church Fortunæ muliebri; and Venus Barbata had a temple erected, for that somewhat was amiss about hair, and so the rest. The Citizens tof 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 Ho. Jydaies 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, by what bawdy Priests, how they hang their noses over the smoke of sacrifices, saith Lucian, and lick bloud 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, & fabros interim qui fecerunt, contemnunt, they adore work, contemn the workman; and as Tertullian follows it, Si homines non essent diis

Livius lib. 1. Deus vobis in posterum propitius, Quirites. 1 Anth. Verdure Imag. deorum. + Mulieris candido splendentes amicimine varioque lætantes gestimine, verno florentes conanime, solum sternentes, &c. Apuleius lib. 11. de Asino aureo. Magna religione quæritur quæ possit adulteria plura numerare Minut. § Lib. de sacrificiis, Fumo inhiantes, & muscarum in morem sanguinem exugentes circum aras effusum.

pro

propitii, non essent dii, had it not been for men, they had never been gods, but blocks still, and stupid statues in which mice, swallows, birds made their nests, spiders their webbes, and in their very mouths laid their excrements. I say were all out as gross, as the shapes in which they Those Images did represent them: Jupiter with a ram's head, Mercury a dogg's, Pan like a goat, Hecate with three heads, one with a beard, another without; see more in Carterius and * Verdurius of their monstrous formes 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 è cælo cecidisse credebant accole, saith Pausanias. They formed some like Storks, Apes, Buls, and yet seriously be lieved; and that which was impious and abominable, they made their Gods notorious whoremasters, incestious Sodomites, (as commonly they were all, as well as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Neptune, &c.) theeves, slaves, drudges, (for Apol lo and Neptune made tiles in Phrygia,) kept sheep, Hercules empty'd stables, Vulcan a blacksmith, unfit to dwell upon the earth for their villanies, much less in heaven, as † Mornay well saith, and yet they gave them out to be such; so weak and brutish, some to whine, lament, and roare, 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; then which, what can be more ridiculous? Nonne ridiculum lugere quod colas, vel colere quod lugeas? (which Minutius objects) Si dii, cur plangitis? si mortui, cur adoratis? that it is no marvel if Lucian, that adamantine persecutor of superstition, and Pliny could so scoffe at them and their horrible Idolatry as they did: If Diagoras took Hercules' Image, and put it under his pot to seeth his pottage, which was, as he said, his 13th labour. But see more of their fopperies in Cypr. 4, tract. de Idol. varietat, Chrysostome advers. Gentil. Arnobius ado. Gentes. Austin. de civ. dei. Theodoret. de curat. Græc, affect. Clemens Alexandrinus, Minutius Felix, Eusebius, Lactantius, Stuckius, &c. Lamentable, tragical, and fearful those Symptomes are, that they should be so far forth affrighted with their fictitious Gods, as to spend the goods, lives, fortunes, pretious time, best dayes in their honour, to Sacrifice unto them, to their inestimable loss, such Hecatombles, so many thousand sheep, Oxen, with

* Imagines Deorum lib. sic inscript. qui terram calcent, &c.

Octaviano.

ກ

m

De ver. relig. cap. 22. Indigni
Jupiter Tragoedus, de sacrificiis,

et passim alias. § 666 severall kinds of sacrifices in Egypt Major reckons up, Tom. 2. coll. of which read more in cap. 1. of Laurentius Pignorius his Ægypt characters, a cause of which Sanubius gives subcis. lib. 3. cap. 1.

a

gilded horns, Goats, as *Croesus King of Lydia, Marcus Julianus, surnamed ob crebras hostias Victimarius, & Tauricremus, and the rest of the Roman Emperours usually did with such labour and cost: and not Emperours only and great ones pro communi bono, were at this charge, but private men for their ordinary occasions. Pythagoras offered an hundred Oxen for the invention of a Geometrical Probleme, and it was an ordinary thing to sacrifice in Lucian's time, "a heifer for their good health, four Oxen for wealth, an hundred for a Kingdom, nine Buls 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 an hog, Proserpina a black lamb, Neptune a Bull, (read more in + Stukius at large) besides sheep, cocks, corals, frankincense, to their undoings, as if their gods were affected with bloud or smoke. "And surely (saith he) if one should but repeat the fopperies of mortall 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 vowes they make; if one should but observe their absurditie and madness, he would burst out a laughing, and pitie their folly." For what can be more absurd than their ordinary prayers, petitions, 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 & 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 an hungrie, a thirst, in the dark, they light candles, offer meat and drink. And what so base as to reveal their counsels and give oracles, è viscerum sterquiliniis, out of the bowels and excrementall parts of beasts? sordidos Deos Varro truely cals 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 § Strabo writes, a thousand okes did not suffice. Who can relate the glorious splendor, and stupend magnificence, the sumptuous building of Diana at

n

*Herod Clio. Immolavit lecta pecora ter mille Delphis, una cum lectis phialis tribus. Superstitiosus Julianus innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactavit. Amianus 25. Boves albi. M. Cæsari salutem, si tu viceris perimus; lib. 3. Romani observantissimi sunt ceremoniarum, bello præsertim. • De sacrificiis: hueulam pro bona valetudine, boves quatuor pro divitiis, centum tauros pro sospite a Troje reditu, &c. +De sacris Gentil. et sacrific. Tyg. 1596. Enimvero si quis recenseret quæ stulti mortales in festis, sacrificiis, diis adorandis, &c. quæ vota faciant, quid de iis statuant, &c. haud scio an risurus, &c. Max. Tyrius ser. 1. Croesus regum omnium stultissimus de lobete consulit, alius de numero arenarum, dimensione maris, &c. § Lib. 4. Ephesus,

Ephesus, Jupiter Ammon's temple in Afrike, the Pantheon at Rome, the Capitoll, 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 10000 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 Radzivilus may be beleeved) 6800 meskites. Fessa 400, whereof 50 are most magnificent, like Saint Paul's in London. Helena built 300 fair Churches in the Holy Land, but one Bassa hath built 400 meskites. The Mahometans have 1000 Monks in a Monastry; 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 Edmund's-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, K. of Macedonia, sent two statues of pure gold to Apollo at Delphos. Croesus king of Lydia dedicated an hundreth 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 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 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 Greeks, 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 Moon was eclipsed, 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 besieged Jerusalam;

с

Boterus polit. lib. 2.

and

and some Jewish Christians iu Africk, 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 die of thirst all, rather than 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 die or yeeld up the Citie. Vix ausum ipse credere (saith †Barletius) tantam superstitionem, vel affirmare levissimam hanc causam tante rei vel magis ridiculam, quum non dubitem risum potius quam 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: Pin what ferall shapes the Divel is adored, ne quid mali intentent, as they say; for in the mountains betwixt Scanderone and Aleppo, at this day, there are dwelling a certain kind 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 Agamemnon's Iphigenia, &c. At • Mexico, when the Spaniards first overcame them, they daily sacrificed viva hominum corda è viventium corporibus extracta, the hearts of men yet living, 20000 in a year (Acosta lib. 5. cap. 20.) to their Idols made of flower and men's blood, and every year six thousand infants of both sexes: And as prodigious to relate how they burie their wives with hus bands deceased, 'tis fearfull to report, and harder to beleeve,

" § Nam certamen habent læthi quæ viva sequatur
Conjugium, pudor est non licuisse mori,"

and burn them alive, best goods, servants, horses, when a gran

die dies, 12000 at once amongst the Tartars, when a great

*They were of the Greek Church.

Lib. 5. de gestis Scanderbegis.

In templis immania Idolorum monstra conspiciuntur, marmorea, lignea, lutea,

&c. Riccius. Deum enim placare non est opus, quia non nocet; sed demonem sacrifici's placant, &c.

Fer. Cortesius.

tomannus navig. lib. 6. cap. 9. P. Martyr. Ocean. dec. eleg. 12.

• Matthias à Michou.

M. Polus. Lod. Ver§ Propertius lib.3. Cham