all vice and uncleanness flow out from me. In sacrifices laid on the altar to be burnt, it was said, as this oblation is consumed by this present fire, so that nothing remains of it; so let all evel be consumed in me, or let such or such an evil which we would repell and avoyd be consumed. It was also a custom when imprecation was made, to touch the altar with the hands of all those for whom such a sacrifice was made, or of them who did desire to be partakers of it, because prayer only cannot prevail, unless he thai prays toucheth the altar with his hands; whence in Virgil,
Those that in these words pray, and altar touch
Th' omnipotent doth hear ----------
And elsewhere,
I touch the altars, and the middle fires,
And the Dieties beseech.
Chapter lxi. How these things must be performed, as to God, so as to inferiour dieties. Every Adoration therefore, oblation, or sacrifice, deprecation, invocation, are differenced thus, viz. either because they are made to God only, or to inferiour dieties, as angels, Stars, Heroes. In these therefore such rules are to be observed, that when any prayer is to be offered to God alone for the obtaining of any effect, it must be done with the commemoration of some work, miracle, sacrament, or promise, taken somewhere out of Scripture; as if there be a deprecation made for the destruction of enemies, let it be commemorated that God destroyed the Giants in the deluge of waters, and the builders of Babel in the confusion of tongues, Sodom, and Gomorrha in raining of fire, the host of Pharaoh in the Red-sea, and the like;
