e souldiers shoot at pricks with their bowes, but their eating passeth:
they will stand eating euen when the other do draw to shoot. The pricke is
a great blanket spread on certaine long poles, he that striketh it, hath of
the best man there standing a piece of crimson Taffata, the which is knit
about his head: in this sort the winners be honoured, and the Louteas with
their bellies full returne home againe. The inhabitants of China be very
great Idolaters, all generally doe worship the heauens: and, as wee are
wont to say, God knoweth it: so say they at euery word, Tien Tautee, that
is to say, The heauens doe know it. Some doe worship the Sonne, and some
the Moone, as they thinke good, for none are bound more to one then to
another. [Sidenote: After the Dutch fashion.] In their temples, the which
they do call Meani, they haue a great altar in the same place as we haue,
true it is that one may goe round about it There set they vp the image of a
certaine Loutea of that countrey, whom they haue in great reuerence for
certaine notable things he did. At the right hand standeth the diuel much
more vgly painted then we doe vse to set him out, whereunto great homage is
done by such as come into the temple to aske counsell, or to draw lottes:
this opinion they haue of him, that he is malicious and able to do euil. If
you aske them what they do thinke of the souls departed, they will answere
that they be immortall, and that as soone as any one departeth out of this
life, he becommeth a diuel if he haue liued well in this world, if
otherwise, that the same diuel changeth him into a bufle, oxe, or dogge.
[Marginal note: Pythagorean like.] Wherefore to this diuel they doe much
honour, to him doe they sacrifice, praying him that he will make them like
vnto himselfe, and not like other beastes. They haue moreouer another sort
of temples, wherein both vpon the altars and also on the walls do stand
many idols well proportioned, but bare headed; these beare name Omithofon,
accompted of them spirits, but such as in heauen doe neither good nor
euill, thought to be such men and women as haue chastly liued in this world
in abstinence from fish and flesh, fed onely with rise and salates. Of that
diuel they make some accompt: for these spirits they care litle or nothing
at all. Againe they hold opinion that if a man do well in this life, the
heauens will giue him many temporall blessings, but if he doe euil, then
shall he haue infirmities, diseas