Chapter LXI

Now, in the first part of his Declaration, Father Oldcorne uttered concerning the Gunpowder Plot a proposition which expressed partial truth alone. Because he expressed truth in the abstract only, not truth in the concrete also, concerning that nefarious scheme.

In other words, Father Oldcorne severed in thought the two kinds of truth, the two aspects of truth, the two parts of truth, which being unified gave the whole truth respecting the moral mode of judging the Gunpowder Treason Plot.

Oldcorne severed concrete truth from abstract truth,[A] practical truth from speculative truth, and so far as his hearer, Humphrey Littleton, was concerned, held that concrete truth, that practical truth, suspended at the sword-point over Littleton’s head.

Now, I maintain that, regard being had to the terrific danger of Littleton’s occasioning mischief, either through stupidity, malice, or both, a man of the intellectual and moral calibre of Edward Oldcorne would have never suffered his tongue to give utterance to a proposition dividing, as with a sword, concrete truth from abstract truth, practical truth from speculative truth, and then holding the former suspended above the head of his questioner, unless and until that great Priest and Jesuit had been first possessed of the living consciousness that he had had, and then was, at that very instant of time when speaking, having that Plot, which represented “the sum of all villainies,” in that it involved “sacrilegious murder,”[A] firmly and unconquerably crushed under his feet.[164]