Gascony, or of Germany, where the miles are great miles. And you must know that the land of promise is in Syria. For the realm of Syria extends from the deserts of Arabia to Cilicia, which is Armenia the Great, that is to say, from south to north; and from east to west it extends from the great deserts of Arabia to the west sea. But in that realm of Syria is the kingdom of Judea, and many other provinces, as Palestine, Galilee, Little Cilicia, and many others. In that country, and other countries beyond, they have a custom, when they make war, and when men besiege a city or castle, and they within dare not send out messengers with letters from lord to lord to ask succour, of binding their letters to the necks of pigeons, and letting them fly; and the pigeons are so taught, that they fly with those letters to the very place that men would send them to. For they are fed in those places where they are sent to, and they naturally return to where they have been fed. And you shall understand that amongst the Saracens, in different parts, dwell many Christian men, of many kinds and different names, and all are baptized, and have different laws and different customs; but all believe in God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; but they always fail in some articles of our faith. Some of these are called Jacobites, because St. James converted them, and St. John baptized them. They say that a man shall make his confession only to God, and not to a man; for only to him should man acknowledge himself guilty of all that he hath misdone; and God ordained not, nor ever devised, nor the prophet either, that one man should confess himself to another (as they say), but only to God; as Moses writeth in the Bible, and as David saith in the Psalter Book, "I will confess to thee, O Lord, in my whole heart:" and "I acknowledge my sin unto thee:"[351] and "Thou art my God, and I will confess to thee:" and "Since the thoughts of man shall confess to thee," &c. For they know all the Bible and the Psalter, and therefore allege they so the letter; but they allege not the authorities thus in Latin, but in their language full openly; and say well, that David and other prophets say it. Nevertheless St. Austin, St. Gregory, and St. Hilary say differently. And on such authorities, they say, that only to God shall a man confess his faults, acknowledging himself guilty, and crying him mercy, and promising him to amend; therefore when they will confess them, they take fire, and set it beside them, and cast therein powder of frankincense; and in the smoke thereof they confess them to God, and cry him mercy. And true it is, that this confession was first and of nature; but St. Peter the apostle, and they that came after him, have ordered to make confession to man; and by good reason, for they perceived well, that no sickness was curable by good medicine laid thereto, unless men knew the nature of the malady; and also no man may