The theatre of Gods judgements wherein is represented the admirable justice of God against all notorious sinners ... / collected out of sacred, ecclesiasticall, and pagan histories by two most reverend doctors in divinity, Thomas Beard ... and Tho. Taylor ...

CHAP. IV. Of Idolatrie.

THe wonderfull Idolatrie of the Heathens was so abho∣minable, that their madnesse would astonish any rea∣sonable man; not to speake of their Iupiter, Mars, Mer∣curie, Apollo, and the rest; Hesiod doth report that they had thirty thousand gods upon the earth, and some most strange ones. Troglodites worshipped Snayles; the Syrians Pigions; the Romans Geese; because by their squ••aking the Capitoll was saved from the Gaules; the A••b••acians a Liò∣nesse; because a Lionesse had killed a Tyrant of theirs: The Delphians a Wolfe, the Samians a Sheepe; the Tenedians a Cow with Calfe; the Al∣banians a Dragon; the Aegyptians Rats and Mise, and Cats, and a Calfe; wherein the Jewes are said to imitate them in the Wildernesse. But the I∣dolatrie of the Romans was beyond all, for they worshipped not onely the higher gods, as they called, but the basest things that could be named in the World: as the Ague, and the Gout, the Privie; yea and Priapus that filthie

Idoll of the Gardens. Now who seeth not but the vengeance of God hath beene poured downe upon all these Nations, for their impious Idolatrie, having beene delivered up into the hands of the Gothes and Vandals, Turks and Tartarians, and make a prey unto them.

Neither doe the Papists come short of these Heathens in their Idolatrie; for they turne the blessed Saints into Idols, and worship them in stead of God: Every countrey, and every citie, and every house, hath his protecting Saint, which they daily invocate; yea, they ascribe a certaine god to every member, and for their severall Cattell, beside their abhominable Idolatrie in worshipping their breaden god: but as God hath taken already in part vengeance upon that Idolatrous Whore of Babylon; so I doubt not but he will fulfill the full measure of his wrath upon them, in his due time, except they repent.