Now, Oldcorne, being a man as good as he was clever, and as clever as he
was good, manifests from the inherent nature of his answer to Humphrey
Littleton a sense, a consciousness, an assurance of freedom from the
restraints and obligations which would have undoubtedly stayed and bound
him had he not been already freed from their power.
Now, it is a superior power that countervails, that renders impotent an
inferior power.
_Now, Oldcorne would be freed from the restraining power of moral
obligations, as to the user of a particular character of speech, if he had
had residing within him a power of superior, of sublimer, that is, of
countervailing force._
_Now, Oldcorne, in his answer to Littleton, manifestly gives evidence of
power, of countervailing power._
_Knowledge gives power: gives countervailing power._
_Therefore it follows that the presence of power, of countervailing power,
in Oldcorne proves likewise the strong probability of knowledge, of
countervailing knowledge likewise._
_And what kind of knowledge can such two-fold knowledge have been, save a
meritorious knowledge of what aforetime had been, but which was then no
longer, the Gunpowder Treason Plot?_
For, from the very moment of Oldcorne’s becoming conscious that the Plot
as a plot had vanished into thin air by (1) personal, actual repentance;
by (2) imputed or constructive repentance; by (3) a personally heroic act:
had vanished like the morning mists before the beams of the rising sun,
Oldcorne would feel himself, so to speak, immediately to be endued with an
extraordinary power: with a power that would straightway cause him to grow
to a loftier stature than all his fellows: with a power that then would
enable him, as it were, to scale the heights, and, at length, to mount up
to the very top of what aforetime had been the baleful Plot, but which
Plot Oldcorne full well knew would be henceforward and for ever emptied
and defecated of and from all murderous, criminous, sacrilegious
quality.[166]
Hence was Oldcorne warranted, justified, and vindicated in viewing and
surveying “the fact of Mr. Catesbie’s” simply speculatively and purely in
the abstract.
Hence was Oldcorne warranted, justified, and vindicated in leaving
Humphrey Littleton _in abstracto_, after the latter had propounded to him
his dangerous question: of leaving the doubter with an answer sounding in
partial truth alone.