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