ns, 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.
Othe