flowed from several
hosts,--as, for instance, in the Churches of St Jean-en-Greve at Paris, at
St Jean d'Angeli at Dijon, and in many other places. They show even the
penknife with which the host at Paris was pierced by a Jew, and which the
poor Parisians hold in as much reverence as the host itself. For this they
were well blamed by a Roman Catholic priest, who declared them to be worse
than the Jews, for worshipping the knife with which the precious body of
Christ was pierced. I think we may apply this observation to the nails,
the spear, and the thorns; and consequently those who worship those
instruments used at our Lord's crucifixion are more wicked than the Jews
who employed them for that purpose.

There are many other relics belonging to this period of our Lord's
history, but it would be tedious to enumerate them all. We shall therefore
pass them over, and say a few words respecting his images,--not the common
ones made by painters and carvers, but those considered as actual relics,
and held in particular veneration. Some of these images are believed to
have been made in a miraculous manner, like those shown at Rome in the
Church of the blessed Virgin, in Portici, at St John of the Lateran, at
Lucca, and other places, and which they pretend were painted by angels. I
think it would be ridiculous to undertake a serious refutation of these
absurdities, the profession of angels not being that of painters, and our
Lord Jesus Christ desired to be known and remembered otherwise than by
carnal images.

Eusebius, it is true, relates, in his Ecclesiastical History, that our
Lord sent the likeness of his face to King Abgarus;(138) but the
authenticity of this account has no better proof than that of a fairy
tale; yet, supposing it were true, how came this likeness to be found at
Rome (out of Abgarus' possession), where people boast to have it now?
Eusebius does not mention where it was in his time, but he merely relates
the story as having happened a long time before he wrote; we must
therefore suppose that this image reappeared after a lapse of many
centuries, and came from Edessa to Rome.

They have forged not only images of Christ's body, but also copies of the
cross. Thus they pretend at Brescia to have the identical cross which
appeared to the Emperor Constantine. This claim is, however, stoutly
opposed by the town of Constance, whose inhabitants maintain that the
above-mentioned cross is preserved in their town, and