Page 140 - UTOPIA

‘They offer up no living creature in sacrifice, nor do they
think it suitable to the Divine Being, from whose bounty it is
that these creatures have derived their lives, to take pleasure
in their deaths, or the offering up their blood. They burn in-
cense and other sweet odours, and have a great number of
wax lights during their worship, not out of any imagination
that such oblations can add anything to the divine nature
(which even prayers cannot do), but as it is a harmless and
pure way of worshipping God; so they think those sweet sa-
vours and lights, together with some other ceremonies, by
a secret and unaccountable virtue, elevate men’s souls, and
inflame them with greater energy and cheerfulness during
the divine worship.
‘All the people appear in the temples in white garments;
but the priest’s vestments are parti-coloured, and both the
work and colours are wonderful. They are made of no rich
materials, for they are neither embroidered nor set with
precious stones; but are composed of the plumes of several
birds, laid together with so much art, and so neatly, that
the true value of them is far beyond the costliest materi-
als. They say, that in the ordering and placing those plumes
some dark mysteries are represented, which pass down
among their priests in a secret tradition concerning them;
and that they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind of
the blessing that they have received from God, and of their
duties, both to Him and to their neighbours. As soon as the
priest appears in those ornaments, they all fall prostrate on
the ground, with so much reverence and so deep a silence,
that such as look on cannot but be struck with it, as if it

140 Utopia