 His defence of the practice of equivocation was published in A Treatise of Equivocation ( c . 1598 ) , originally titled A Treatise against lying and fraudulent dissimulation . Equivocation was condemned by most of his contemporaries as outright lying , including William Shakespeare , who may have alluded to Garnet in Macbeth with the following line : " who committed treason enough for God 's sake , yet could not <unk> to heaven " . 
