A VINDICATION OF Dr. Titus' Oats; From Two Late SCURRILOUS LIBELS, Written to create a Disbelief of the POPISH PLOT.  
The one Entitled a NARRATIVE By E. SETTLE.  
The other a Modest Vindication Of TITUS OATS the Salamanca Doctor from Perjury, etc. By A. eliot.  
the last of these I have already  
Quod spurcae moriens lucerna, Ledae,  
Quod Ceromata faece de Sabina,  
Quod Vulpis fuga, viperae cubile,  
Mallem, quam quod oles, olere Bassa.  
LONDON, Printed by T. Snowden for the Author, 1683:   

A VINDICATION OF Dr. Titus' Oats; FROM Two Late Scurrilous Libels, written to create a Disbelief of the POPISH PLOT.  
The one Entitled a Narrative by E. Settle, 
 The other a modest Vindication of Titus Oats the Salamanca Doctor from Perjury, etc.  
WHat shall a Man say, when Protestants, turn Hackneys to the Papists: They say is Settle is become a Motley, Popish Protestant Recantor— of what?— of nothing to the purpose— only he says, that out of a Peck against his Royal Highness about his simple Empress of Morocco, he took an opportunity from the Plot, to revenge himself upon the Duke in his Character, etc. and what then? Why then he struck in with the Whigs, Dedicated his Pope Joan to the Earl of Shaftsbury, and got his Living by writing Lampoons.— And did the Whigs encourage him?— No, no, they were not so mad:— His Bulk was so big, and so many Windows into his Soul, that they soon discerned him. This was one, but there was yet another Motive to Recantation: For finding himself an abandoned and forlorn Creature, and estranged from Food, thereupon he puts in among the Plot haters and no doubt made them great and large Promises. Thereupon they received him to mercy, and promised him he should once more eat again as other Mortals do: But upon this condition, that he should first e'er all his words that ever he had wrote against his first.— Now can't I imagine what the Recantation of such a fellow signifies: For the submissions of worthless Persons, and shammoking Libelers, of no credit, (and none but such will venture to write a Libel) are just like the throwing of dirt upon a Gentleman's , and then thinking to rinse them off again with puddle water. Now I would fain know, Cui Bono, did this Fellow do this? it must be either for his own, or the public advantage: The Public scorns him; for the party which he would thrust himself into, laughs at him, and the party which he has deserted, abhors him. He is in such a Dilemma of Contempt, that nothing but a Halter of his own knitting can rid him of the Biforked Argument. Now suppose he should hang himself, 'twas but a Tragedy still: And certainly those that are his friends can never give him better advice, than to persuade him to such an Exit, which will give him the Renown of making the best Tragedy that ever he made in his Life. For the Nobility of his Extraction, and his most Heroic Virtues and Qualities, have been already so well displayed by others, that they must have strangely forfeited their Reason, who think him a Champion fit to encounter Majesty, and the public Justice of the Realm. Rather they ought to believe, that he wanted a lodging to put his head in, and was therefore resolved to write himself either into Bedlam or Newgate.  
But Elkana says he thought he had done for the best, and therefore since he now finds he has taken wrong measures, he is ready to write another Narrative, to the utter renouncing of what ever he has said in his late Narrative against the Popish Plot, and that he is likewise willing to subscribe to any Ignominious Title which shall be demanded of him for doing what he has done. This would seem odd indeed to hop from Recantation to Recantation: But since Poets and Painters are allowed the great privilege of Quidlibet Audendi; why should Mr. E. S. be denied to attempt any probable means to recover the lost Grace of Mankind. He has found Tragedy not very successful, let him now try his Comic Vein. He has filled the World with scorn and indignation; let the offended People now have a little Mirth for their Money.  
Nay Gentlemen. They say the Right Worshipful Author desires ye to prepare yourselves accordingly; for 'tis reported, he himself gives out, that he is about writing an Answer to his own Narrative. And will not, that, Gentlemen be mighty pleasant? For finding this way of his of affirming there is no Plot, will not answer expectation, he is now resolved to affirm once more there is a Plot; projecting cunningly with himself, that then certainly no body will believe a Plot, because he has affirmed it.  
And thus is Mr. E. S. become one of those Indigent Bullies rebuked by himself; who in all Companies run down the Popish Plot, Religion and Property, because they have neither Consciences nor Lands to lose. Alas, the Plot, Religion and Property were once his Darlings, his Helena's, his Mrs L— s, however such a sudden blindness came to benight his Senses.— But his Senses are not benighted he says, they burn as clear as any Candle upon the Stage; only he is resolved to show the World his dexterity in declaring and undeclaring, in making a Thing a Thing, and no Thing. You shall see how he can show tricks with the Plot, as a Juggler does with his Balls;— Hei Pass to day, and the Plot's Gone— Hictius Doctius to morrow, and it comes again.— Sometimes he is in a good humour, and then they say, he resolves to write an Answer to his own Narrative.— By and by, his Bookseller and He cannot agree upon the point, and then he falls a Railing and Fuming, and swears there was no Plot: That he never believed a tittle of what he writ himself in Favour of the Plot; and that he would not have hanged a Dog upon the Evidence of Oats or Bedlow. Tho his Betters by some millions both in Honour, Justice and Integrity did. Now what a happy turn had it been for those hanged— drawn, and quartered Traitors. had E. S. been their Judge. Such a Salomon-like Act as the saying so many Innocent lives, had certainly ere this advanced him into Pope Jone's Place, and he had been bleating forth his Excommunications, as well as his Scandals and Opprobriums against the Sovereign Justice of his Country before now. But alas, he was then feed; the wrong side a now, late Repentance altering the Course of his Nature; Enter E. S. like an Angel from the top of the Scenes, with a Recorder and a Bagpipe▪  

From Mercy, and from Justice purely sent,  
T' o'erthrow the Proud, and aid the Innocent:  
While on Triumphant Seat, both Knave and Sot,  
The Lofty Poet sits to damn the Plot.   
One would have thought he might have put his Wits to a better Use, by Five i'th' Hundred, and have never endangered the Principal.  
He stands, Devil-like, upon the Pinnacle of his own fond Conceit, and would have all the People fall down and Worship him, that is, he would have the People believe all his Mercenary Riffraff to be true, and his Poetical Raptures to excel all the Wisdom and Sagacity of the Nation.  
But what says Mr. E. S. to all this? Why. he cries, that he is but at his old Trade still; that is, he is either at his old trade of Feigning and Fabling; or else he is at his beloved Vocation of making of Fireworks, and sending about his Ignes Fatuos' to delude and incense the Nation, as if nothing had been put upon 'em for these many years by the High trusties of their Lives and Liberties, but mere Imposture and false Alarm. For which he deserves to be as fairly condemned at the Sessions at the Old Bailie, as he was formerly in the Sessions of the Poets. But Poets, when they go beyond their Sphere, and meddle with Popish Plots have the same misfortune, and fall under the same Character which Hesiod gives the Cretans. To be always Liars, evil Beasts, and mere slaves to their Bellies. In which words you have Mr. E. S' motive to his design, all his good Qualities, and the means he has made use of to bring his design about.  
Now the chief Motive for which we are beholden to Mr. E.S. for his Narrative was Necessity; who though she be a severe Mistress, and pinches to the Quick where she is disobeyed, yet does she never mind how her slaves employ themselves, so her Cries be stopped. For the truth of this you need go no further than the Dedication, laden with flattery and Sycophantism, the most certain Signs in the World of a hungry Appetite.  
His good Qualities are no less perspicuous in prostituting the choicest of his parts to Libel and Scurrility, and that of the highest Nature, and the most inordinate of Personal Reflections never fit to be suffered, nor to be connived at. Nor indeed is it possible for Mr. E. S. to forsake his old practices, only he changes the Scene, and now gins to spend his Fireworks upon the Plot, though he could not be so silly, to think such an Adventure could be prosecuted, without venting the highest Defamations in the World against all the Sacred Orders of Government in the Kingdom.  
To make way for this, he first makes his submissions to the Duke, and some strange Mister-piece of his Wit and Rhetoric to obliterate the Plot, is the only means in the World that he can find to gain acceptance of those submissions, and oblivion of his Offences: Which is an insinuation of Mr. E. S' so wicked and unmannerly, as if he thought there could be no better satisfaction for his past miscarriages, than by creating obvious conclusion of a more dangerous nature, to the rekindling of former Jealousies, and renewing extinguished fears among the People, or that the way to make an Atonement for several lesser Libels, were to compile one great one. As if there could have been no Subject so graceful to his R. H. or those great Personages who now sit at the Helm of State, then to write against the Plot. Certainly such a Politic contrivance was never Minervaed out of the noddle of such a heap of Flesh and Folly before.  
Well, but how must this Plot be confounded?— Why— by way of Irony; Absurdity, Impossibility, and Incoherence. And yet if a man will make it his business to cavil at the daily Testimonies given at the Old Bailie upon Trials even of Murder itself, and he shall find strange contradictions, and strange incoherencies many times in the Evidence, frequently contrived by the Prisoners Friends on purpose to puzzle the Judges and the Jury, by garbling the Prisoners Witnesses with the Kings, and yet the Judges are not so nice to stand so strictly upon circumstances, as Mr. E. S. But finding it agreed on all hands that the person was slain, give sentence according to the general truth, leaving the reconciliation of differing circumstances to such charitable Gentlemen as Mr. E. S. And therefore to plead Absurdity, and Impossibility, and Incoherence, where matter of Fact has been proved and determined by several Trials and Convictions, was a laborious and vain piece of toil more proper for Mr. E. S. to have presented to Antichrist for abasing Pope Joan, then where he directed his intentions. For when a thing is once taken for truth, there is nothing contains more falsehood than a silly persuasion to the contrary. However, this is observable that he puts the greatest stress of his Arguments upon his own misbelief: You are not to believe the supposition of any thing like a Massacre, because he will not grant it, and defies the Eloquence of an Angel to convince any rational man of the probability of it. And he it certain if Popery had no other door for its entrance, the Jesuits might as well have contrived to have brought it in by the Trojan Horse. Now why the whole Nation should take his word for their security, when an ordinary Chandler will hardly take it for a Single pot, is hard to determine. Nor is his defiance of Angel's Eloquence any more to be credited: For no man is so simple to think Mr. E. S. was ever such a Converser with Angels, as to know the force of their Eloquence. These are therefore mere Rodomontadoes, Poetic Raptures, and presumptions upon his acquaintance with Angels, and certainty of things, which all the World knows is not worth the tenth part of a Rats-tail, and consequently whatever he justifies upon the credit of those presumptions, is to be looked upon to be as ridiculous, and as false and Chimerical as his idle credit itself.  
He will not allow that a Popish Successor, had his Majesty miscarried by Popish contrivance, coming quietly to the Crown, could have achieved any exploits to the Subversion of the Government, and establishing Popish Tyranny, Now his reasons for this— because he questions it— and he professes he is to learn. Supernatural Mr. E. S.— The Pope and most Catholic King reward thee for these two sublime Bully Arguments o'their side. Let all the Logicians suffer in a Massacre like Ramus, with all their Darasti's and Frisesmorum's; For Mr. E. S. has here found out a way beyond the Eloquence and Arguments of Angels to convince the world of the falsity of the Plot; but the Parliament was not of his mind, and his Majesty was pleased to comply with their fears, and to condescend to all other expedients, except the Bill of Exclusion that could be thought of to secure them. But Mr. E. S' Politics are above all the Earth, and what he questions, and is to learn, must pass for undeniable impossibility.  
And thus, ex pede Herculem, others have been more full, and therefore to avoid Tautology, I shall say no more, but that the whole Narrative is nothing but a meet Bantring piece of delusive Verbosity; of which, though never so full of falsehood, you need not wonder that Mr. E. S. is the Author. For he tells ye, he is able to write a Narrative against a Judas, nay against the Devil himself, that shall not have one syllable of truth in it. Nor are you to question his Abilities, since you may very well believe he intends to take his pattern from what he has done already.  
FINIS.