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 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 par-
ticulars, 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, Flori
mondus, 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
Autter 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-gover-
nors, as your Grace is, who give atendance unto reading, which the
8 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 men-
tioned in the Revelation; that, by your Grace's means, the epha,
wherein popish wickedness sitteth, may be lifted up between the earth
and the lieaven, and carried out of the north into the land of Sinar,
and set there upon his own place.