who call them _pious frauds_, _i.e._,
_honest deceits_ for exciting the devotion of the people.

After these come the relics belonging to the period from the childhood to
the death of Jesus Christ, such as the water pots in which Christ changed
water into wine at the marriage feast of Cana in Galilee.

One would naturally inquire how they were preserved for so long a time?
for it is necessary to bear in mind that they were not discovered until
eight hundred or a thousand years after the performance of the miracle.

I cannot tell all the places where these water pots are shown; I only know
that they can be seen at Pisa, Ravenna, Cluny, Antwerp, and Salvatierra in
Spain.(131)

At Orleans they have even the wine which was obtained by that miracle, and
once a-year the priests there give to those who bring offerings a small
spoonful, saying that they shall taste of the very wine made by our Lord
at the marriage feast, and its quantity never decreases, the cup being
always refilled. I do not know of what date are his shoes, which are
preserved in a place at Rome called _Sancta Sanctorum_, or whether he had
worn them in his childhood or manhood; but this is of little moment, for
what I have already mentioned sufficiently shows the gross imposition of
producing now the shoes of Jesus Christ, which were not possessed by the
apostles in their time.

Now, let us proceed to the last supper which Christ had with his apostles.
The table is at St John of the Lateran at Rome; some bread made for that
occasion at Salvatierra in Spain; and the knife with which the paschal
lamb was carved is at Treves. Now, it is necessary to observe that Christ
made that supper in a borrowed room, and on going from thence he left the
table, which was not removed by the apostles. Jerusalem was soon
afterwards destroyed. How, then, could the table be found after a lapse of
eight hundred years?

Moreover, in the early ages tables were made of quite a different shape to
those of our days, for people then took their repasts in a lying, not in a
sitting posture--a circumstance expressly mentioned in the Gospels. The
deceit is therefore quite manifest, without more being added to prove it.

The cup in which Christ gave the sacrament of his blood to the apostles is
shown at Notre Dame de l'Isle, near Lyons; and there is another in a
convent of Augustine monks in the Albigeois;--which is the true one?
Charles Sigonius, a celebrated historian of our times, s