Now, the contention is this: That regard being had to the extraordinary
heinousness of the Gunpowder Plot, in point of underhand stealthiness and
secrecy as well as of deliberateness, malice, magnitude, and cruelty, no
man of moral uprightness and intellectual keenness could be——without doing
a violence to his human nature that is all but incredible——so unspeakably
reckless and utterly insane as to fling broadcast to the winds, for the
wayfaring man and the fool to pick up and con for their own and their
hapless fellow-creatures’ moral destruction, an _oral statement_ as to
this diabolical Plot, that expressed ways of looking at the Plot merely
speculative and simply in the abstract,[A] _save and except_ on one
condition only, namely, that such speaker had had both from without and
from within, _et ab extra et ab intra_, a special _knowledge_.
[Footnote A: It is to be noted that in this momentous Declaration of the
12th March, 1605-6, Oldcorne in the first part reserves or conceals
“_partial truth_;” that is to say, in _this_ case, _truth in the concrete,
or truth in action_. While in the second part of the Declaration Oldcorne
orally disclaims, denies, or dissembles integral truth, that is here a
special and particular knowledge of the end the plotters had in view, and
the means they purposed to adopt. The knowledge he had received was of a
nature _official_, and at least conditionally, though not absolutely,
_private_ knowledge.]
Furthermore, _a special knowledge, with absolute certitude_, which
_warranted_ the speaker in mentally surveying that Plot not merely as it
_then_ was at the moment when he was giving utterance to his speculative
statement concerning it, but, as he full well knew, at some point of time
prior to that fateful day, November the 5th, 1605, it had been destined to
be perpetually, namely, A PLOT _ante factum in æternum_, a mere abstract
mental plan for ever. Aye, a mere abstract mental plan to all eternity;
because transmuted and transformed by some process wherein that speaker
had himself taken a primal, an essential, a meritorious part.[A]
[Footnote A: The argument is that a man at once good and clever, like
Edward Oldcorne, would not, according to the rules that govern human
nature and daily experience, have clothed in words and then let loose to
wander about the world seeking whom it might fall in with and victimize, a
bare abstract proposition regarding the Plot, _unless_ he had been first
absolutely certain that the foundation-thing, the Plot itself, was too
attenuated and ghost-like to work hurt or mischief to any human creature.
Now, since Littleton propounded his question _after_ the 5th of November,
Oldcorne had an _ordinary_ ground for allowing himself to speak of the
defunct Plot purely in the abstract. But this was an obviously very
dangerous thing to do, both for Littleton’s sake, the general public’s
sake (Catholic or Protestant), and for the speaker’s own sake. Therefore
the fact that Oldcorne did so speak postulates something _more than
ordinary_. Hence, as Oldcorne was a man of virtue both intellectually and
morally, the reasonable inference is that Oldcorne _had an extraordinary
ground_ for his answer which endued him with a special liberty of abstract
speech in regard to the matter. _That extraordinary ground, I maintain,
was based deep down within the depths of his own interior knowledge._]