MEXICAN HUMAN SACRIFICES. 345 



also shewes that the like kinde of sacrifice had been in vse LlB - T 



amongst the barbarous nations of the Cananeans, and lebu- 

 seans, and others, whereof the booke of Wisedome speakes: 

 &quot; They call it peace to live in so great miseries and vexa 

 tions as to sacrifice their own children, or to doe other hid 

 den sacrifices, as to watch whole nights doing the actes of 

 fooles, and so they keepe no cleanenesse in their life, nor in 

 their marriages, but one through envy takes away the life 

 of another, another takes away his wife and his content 

 ment, and all is in confusion, blood, murther, theft, deceipt, 

 corruption, infidelitie, seditious, penuries, mutinies, forget- 

 fulnesse of God, pollution of soules, change of sexes and 

 birth, inconstancie of marriages, and the disorder of adul 

 tery and filthiness; for idolatry is the sincke of all miseries.&quot; 

 The Wise man spcakcth this of those people of whome David Psai. cv. 

 cotnplaines, that the people of Israel had learned those cus- 

 tomes, even to sacrifice their sonnes and daughters to the 

 divell, the which was never pleasing nor agreeable vnto God. 

 For as hee is the Authour of life, and hath made all these 

 things for the commoditie and good of man, so is hee not 

 pleased that men should take the lives one from another; 

 although the Lord did approve and accept the willingnesse 

 of the faithfull patriarke Abraham, yet did hee not consent 

 to the deede, which was to cut off the head of his sonne; 

 wherein wee see the malice and tyranny of the divell, who 

 would be herein as God, taking pleasure to be worshipt with 

 the effusion of man s blood, procuring by this meaues the 

 ruine of soule and body together for the deadly hatred he 

 beareth to man as his cruell enemy. 1 



1 See, on the subject of Peruvian human sacrifices, the volume on 

 Laws and Ititts of the Yncas, pp. 54, 58, 79, 85, 100, 166. See also my 

 note on the subject in G. dc la Vcya, i, p. 139. 



