The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Letters between John Ainsworth and Henry Ainsworth

In a series of letters, John Ainsworth who had renounced Anglicanism and was imprisoned in London as a result, conducts a theological debate with Brownist minister Henry Ainsworth (no apparent relation). 

In one of the letters, John Ainsworth, writing from Amsterdam, refers to Prester John in a rhetorical maneuver to show that Henry's supposed Catholicism was not grounded in history or reality:
If therfore you speak, let it be as the words of God; and if by his word you can say any thing to help you, show it, and by his grace, I will hear. Otherwise your assumed name Catholik, moves me no more then the name Apostolik, Pretegiani (corruptly called Prester John,) among the Ethiopians (from EEBO)

 

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