The practical divinity of the papists discovered to be destructive of Christianity and mens…

But I need not insist on such Relics, as are to have Divine worship by consequence: those which they say expressly should be so worshipped, are enow, and as many as they please to imagine. For though they have no good ground to believe, that they have any one true Relic of Christ, or the least part of one: yet imagination is enough with them, both to give them being, and to multiply them in infinitum, and to warrant their worship of each of them, as of Christ himself: even such imaginations as interfere, and confute one another, and are each of them confuted by such miracles, as are the ground of the whole imposture. The fore-skin of Christ is more Religiously worshipped among them, than Christ himself, as ^(u)Erasmus observed. It is kept and exposed, in at least ^(x)four several Countries, and miracles brought to confirm the truth of its being there: and yet while it is seen, and adored in so many places on Earth, some of their chief Writers say it is no where on Earth, but in Heaven; and must be so, otherwise the glorified body of Christ would be imperfect, and not entire. His Shirt, and besides that (though he had no other Shirt) his Coat, which the Soldiers disposed of at his death, was not found till the year 593: ^(y)yet they had it elsewhere, and greatly worshipped it long before in a City of Galatia, says ^(z)Gregory of Tours. 'Tis much that they should have it, before it was found, and something strange too (that as it was without seam so) it should be without Rent, though afterwards they they found it, in several places at once, many hundred miles distant. They have it in Germany, and they have it in France, and they may have it in all parts of the World at once, as certainly ⟨p. 196⟩as they have it there: but whether they have it or no, that which they take to be it, must have the same worship and honour with Christ. And we must not think it strange, that it should be in so many places, since, they say, ^(a)it grew on his back, and so not unlikely might multiply it self since. About the blood of Christ there is no less imposture, and as great Idolatry. They pretend to have much of it in parcels, that which Nicodemus saved in his Glove, that which Longinus brought in a Vessel to Mantua, that which Joseph of Arimathea brought into England in two Silver Vessels, that which is kept at Venice with the Earth it fell on, that which is showed at the Holy Chapel in Paris;