ds us to infer what an immense quantity of ashes must,
by this means, have been showered down somewhere on the sea; because at
_Mindanao_, an hundred miles off, all the land was covered with ashes a
foot thick.

And now, I must add; that such kind of _falling of stones from the
clouds_, as has been described to have happened in Tuscany, seems to
have happened also in very remote ages, of which we are not without
sufficient testimony; and such as well deserves to be allowed and
considered, on the present occasion; although the knowledge of the facts
was, at first, in days of ignorance and gross darkness, soon perverted
to the very worst purposes.

In the Acts of the holy Apostles, we read, that the chief magistrate, at
_Ephesus_, begun his harangue to the people, by saying, "Ye men of
Ephesus, _what man is there that knoweth not how that the City of the
Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the_ IMAGE
_which fell down from Jupiter_?" (or rather, as the original Greek has
it) "_of_ THAT _which fell down from Jupiter_?" And the learned
_Greaves_ leads us to conclude this image of Diana to have been nothing
but _a conical, or pyramidal stone_, that fell from the clouds. For he
tells us,[L] on unquestionable authorities, that many others of the
images of heathen deities were merely such.

Herodian expressly declares,[M] that the Phoenicians had no statue of
the sun, polished by hand, to express an image; but only had a certain
_great stone, circular below, and ending with a sharpness above, in the
figure of a cone, of black colour. And they report it to have fallen
from heaven, and to be the image of the sun_.

So Tacitus says,[N] that at Cyprus, _the image of Venus was not of human
shape; but a figure rising continually round, from a larger bottom to a
small top, in conical fashion_. And it is to be remarked, that _Maximus
Tyrius_ (who perhaps was a more accurate mathematician,) says, the stone
was _pyramidal_.

And in Corinth, we are told by _Pausanias_,[O] that the images both of
_Jupiter Melichius_, and of _Diana_, were made (if made at all by hand)
with little or no art. The former being represented by a pyramid, the
latter by a column.

_Clemens Alexandrinus_ was so well acquainted with these facts, that he
even concludes[P] the worship of such stones to have been the first, and
earliest idolatry, in the world.

It is hard to conceive how mankind should ever have been led to so
accursed