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