There are also certain popular prognosticks drawn from festivals in the Calender, and conceived opinions of certain days in months; so is there a general tradition in most parts of _Europe_, that inferreth the coldness of succeeding winter from the shining of the Sun upon _Candlemas_ day, or the Purification of the Virgin _Mary_, according to the proverbial distich,
_Si Sol splendescat Mariâ purificante, Major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante._
So is it usual among us to qualifie and conditionate the twelve months of the year, answerably unto the temper of the twelve days in _Christmas_; and to ascribe unto March certain borrowed days from April; all which men seem to believe upon annual experience of their own, and the received traditions of their fore-fathers.
Now it is manifest, and most men likewise know, that the Calenders of these computers, and the accounts of these days are very different; the Greeks dissenting from the Latins, and the Latins from each other; the one observing the _Julian_ or ancient account, as great _Britain_ and part of _Germany_; the other adhering to the _Gregorian_ or new account, as _Italy_, _France_, _Spain_, and the united Provinces of the Netherlands. Now this later account by ten days at least anticipateth the other; so that before the one beginneth the account, the other is past it; yet in the several calculations, the same events seem true, and men with equal opinion of verity, expect and confess a confirmation from them all. Whereby is evident the Oraculous authority of tradition, and the easie seduction of men, neither enquiring into the verity of the substance, nor reforming upon repugnance of circumstance.
And thus may divers easily be mistaken who superstitiously observe certain times, or set down unto themselves an observation of unfortunate months, or dayes, or hours; As did the _Egyptians_, two in every month, and the _Romans_, the days after the Nones, Ides and Calends. And thus the Rules of Navigators must often fail, setting down, as _Rhodiginus_ observeth, suspected and ominous days in every month, as the first and seventh of March, the fift and sixt of April, the sixt, the twelfth and fifteenth of February. For the accounts hereof in these months are very different in our days, and were different with several Nations in Ages past; and how strictly soever the account be made, and even by the self-same Calender, yet is it possible that Navigators may be out. For so were the Hollanders, who passing Westward through _fretum le Mayre_, and compassing the Globe, upon their return into their own Country, found that they had lost a day. For if two men at the same time travel from the same place, the one Eastward, the other Westward round about the earth, and meet in the same place from whence the first set forth; it will so fall out, that he which hath moved Eastward against the diurnal motion of the Sun, by anticipating dayly something of its circle with his own motion, will gaine one day; but he that travelleth Westward, with the motion of the Sun, by seconding its revolution, shall lose or come short a day. And therefore also upon these grounds that _Delos_ was seated in the middle of the earth, it was no exact decision, because two Eagles let fly East and West by _Jupiter_, their meeting fell out just in the Island _Delos_.
