ing of wordes, which here is plainly set downe, beginning thus." Then comes a treatment under the following heads: "Of the manner and diversity of Lyes"; "Of Lyes certaine"; "Of conditional Lyes"; "Of the Lye in general"; "Of the Lye in particular," and "Of foolish Lyes." One or two quotations may be of interest as a justification of Touchstone and his creed.
"Conditionall lyes be such as are given conditionally: as if a man should say or write these wordes. If thou hast saide that I have offered my Lord abuse, thou lyest: or if thou saiest so hereafter, thou shalt lye. And as often as thou hast or shalt so say, so oft do I and will I say that thou doest lye. Of these kind of lyes given in this manner, often arise much contention in words, and divers intricate worthy battailes, multiplying wordes upon wordes, whereof no sure conclusion can arise." Furthermore, the reader is warned "by all means possible to shunne all conditionall lyes, never giving any other but certayne Lyes: the which in like manner they ought to have great regarde, that they give them not, unlesse they be by some sure means infallibly assured, that they give them rightly, to the ende that the parties unto whom they be given, may be forced without further Ifs and Ands, either to deny or justifie, that which they have spoken."
