Note XXV‑3 — Chapter XXV · NICARAGUA AND COSTA RICA. 1601-1700.

New Survey W. Indies (3d ed., London, 1677), 419. The author lived in the Indies between 1625 and 1637, and made, as he tells us, 9,000 pesos during these 12 years. He was an acute observer, and captious in doctrinal matters, as the following passage will show: 'Whilest this traffick was (at Portobello), it happened unto me that which I have formerly testified in my Recantation Sermon at Pauls Church, which if by that means it have not come unto the knowledge of many, I desire again to record it in this my History, that to all England it may be published; which was, that one day saying the Mass in the chief Church, after the Consecration of the bread, being with my eyes shut at that prayer, which the Church of Rome calleth the Memento for their dead, there came from behind the Altar a Mouse, which running about, came to the very bread or Wafer-god of the Papists, and taking it in his mouth ran away with it, not being perceived by any of the people who were at Mass, for that the Altar was high, by reason of the steps going up to it, and the people far beneath. But as soon as I opened my eyes to go on with my Mass, and perceived my God stolen away, I looked about the Altar, and saw the mouse running away with it.... Whereupon, not knowing what the people had seen, I turned myself unto them, and called them unto the Altar, and told them plainly that whilst I was in my Memento prayers and meditations, a Mouse had carried away the Sacrament, and that I knew not what to do unless they would help me to finde it out again.... After much searching and inquiry for the sacrilegious beast, they found at last in a hole of the wall the Sacrament half eaten up, which with great joy they took out, and as if the Ark had been brought again from the Philistins to the Israelites, so they rejoiced for their new-found God.... I observed in it the marks and signs of the teeth of the Mouse, as they are to be seen in a piece of Cheese gnawn and eaten by it.... And so Transubstantiation here in my judgement was confuted by a Mouse.' New Survey, 446-8.