believe lyes, that they may be damned': for few or none of these late apostates, for any thing I can learn, were ever in love with the truth. Among us they were, but they were not of us, as now appears by their departing from us; for, if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; doubtless, they would never have fallen to popery. For, though popery be managed after the most politick manner, yet, in itself, it is a gross religion; and the perfecters thereof as shameless men in avowing manifest untruths, and denying known truths, as ever set pen to paper; all which it is as easy to prove, as to object against them. But my purpose, at this time, is, to lay open their shame in denying known truths; which, though it may be shewed by divers particulars, as, namely, by Parsons's and Bishop's denying that they call their Pope their Lord God; by Bellarmine's denying that any Jesuit had any hand in the powder-treason; by their 'general denying that Pope Honorius the First was an heretick, and by such like; yet most apparently their impudency appears in denying the report of Pope Joan, which is proved by a cloud of witnesses, in this discourse (which I make bold to present unto your Grace) for they are driven to feign, to forge, to cog, to play the fools, and, in plain English, to lye all manner of lyes for the covering of their shame in this. Onuphrius, Harding, Saunders, Cope, Genebrard, Bellarmine, Bernartius, Florimondus, Papyrius Masso, Baronius, Parsons, and divers others, who have joined hand in hand, with purpose to carry this cause away by a strong hand, are so intangled in it, that it is with them, as with birds in the lime-twigs, which stick the faster in, by how much they flutter the more to get out. Which if your Grace, upon perusing at your best leisure, shall find true, my humble desire is, that you will give me leave to publish it under your Grace's name; partly, that, by it, the simpler sort (for I write not for the learned) may have a taste, by this, of the honesty, or rather dishonesty, of Papists, in handling of points in controversy; and, partly, that it may be a testimony of that reverent respect, which I acknowledge due to such church-governors, as your Grace is, who give atendance unto reading, which the *apostle willed Timothy to do, and, after the example of the ancient bishops, preach often, drawing on others, not by words only, but by example also, to performance of like exercises. Hereafter, if it please God, that health and means of books serve, I shall light on some more profitable argument. In the mean while, I pray God strengthen your Grace's hands to the finishing of the Lord's work, in the province wherein you sit, as one of the seven angels in the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation; that, by your Grace's means, the epha, wherein popish wickedness sitteth, may be lifted up between the earth and the heaven, and carried out of the north into the land of Sinar, and set there upon his own place.
Your Grace's at Commandment,
ALEXANDER COOKE.
1 N. D. In his Warnword to Sir Francis Hastings's Watchword, Encounter I. cap. 2. In his Reproof of Dr. Abbot's Defence of Mr. Perkins's Preface to the Reader, p. 10 3 Apologia ad lib. Jacob. Mag. Britan, Regis, cap. xv. p. 208.
4 Bellarm. Paron. Pighius, &c.