The memoires of Titus Oates written for publick satisfaction.

THE PREFACE.

THE great and wonderful Exploits of our Hero Titus, have so far out-done the Feats of Sancho Pancha himself, that the very Atcheivments even of a Ga∣rantua, will bear a fairer Appearance of History and Truth, than the more Romantick Narrative of our Great and For∣midable Salamanca Discoverer. For, truly to consider how strangely powerful, the Infatuations even of almost three whole Kingdoms have been, in reposing such implicite Faith in a Discovery made up of so many Incongruities, Incon∣sistencies and palpable Contradictions, as are all along through the Depositions of the pretended Popish-Plot, is enough to make the English Credulity so universally ridiculous, that all Christendom shall blush at us; and our very Posterity shall be so much ashamed of their Forefathers Folleys, and stupidity; till future Generations, even for their own Repu∣tation, shall as zealously indeavour to cover and conceal this most Egregious Blindside of their besotted Progenitors, as ever Shem and Japhet did the Nakedness of their Fa∣ther.

But because Justice has at last in some part overtaken him, and Frydays and Saturdays Inquisition into the Inno∣cent Blood, that that Barbarous Wretch has so solemnly

murdered, has set forth the Perjured Murtherer in some of his true infernal Colours; I have thought fit to Publish these farther Memoires of that ever execrable Fardle of Imposture and Perjury, his pretended Discovery of the Popish Plot. And the reason of this undertaking is, that notwithstand∣ing the two last Tryals have made his Shams and Lies so no∣toriously apparent, as to make him truly deserve the Lord Chief Justices proper character of him of being certainly the Blackest of Villains that ever lived upon the face of the Earth, and those two Limbs of his Plot, his Consult, on the 24th of April, and the August following, have sufficiently as∣sured us that all the rest of his Discoveryes are but Bran∣ches of the same damnable Stock: whilst the same vein of per∣jury runs thro' the whole Mass of his Hellish Lies and Narra∣tives; yet because the Universall spirit of Delusion is such, that too many of our English Fools are as fond of their own senceless Dreams as of their very Bibles themselves; and no doubt there are yet thousands of those unthinking, unconverted Animals, that have that veneration still for their Darling Titus, that they pay him even a wild Indian Adoration, and make a God of the Devil himself, it will not be amiss to examine a few more parti∣culars, by way of enquiry into the most important Foundation of his whole Plot, and shew what Nonsense and Chymeras have been imposed upon the World.