Chapter LXIV

Now, partial truth, as has been affirmed already, is not, in its proportion, less true than the full orb of truth.[A] And many are the times and many are the circumstances in this strangely chequered human life of ours, with its endless movements and its perpetual vicissitudes, when apparently conflicting and antagonistic duties can be in justice, equity, and honour reconciled on one condition only, namely, that man shall leave to Omniscience alone, “from Whom no secrets are hid,” a knowledge of the full orb of certain degrees of some particular kind of truth, governing some particular subject-matter under consideration.[165][B]

Just as on some wild, tempestuous night, the full orb of the silvery moon is obscured to the eye of the gazer by a dark, driving cloud.

Now, it has been said that, partly, because Oldcorne inferred insincerity of heart in Humphrey Littleton, and, partly, because Oldcorne inferred in his questioner pernicious purposes in propounding the question he did propound respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot, therefore Oldcorne gave Littleton an answer sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.

Oldcorne’s own expressed words are as follow: —

“In this warie sort I spake to him bycause I doubted he came to entrap me, and that he should take no advantage of my words whither he reported them to Catholics or to Protestants.”

Unquestionably, this must have been a reason — one reason, that is — for Father Oldcorne’s flanking, evasive reply, sounding in partial — that is, in this case, in abstract, in speculative — truth alone.

For otherwise a man of such approved goodness and established character would have never declared it to be a reason. The contrary supposal it is impossible to entertain.

But because Oldcorne’s declared reason was undoubtedly a reason, it does not follow — regard being had to persons, times, and circumstances — either from the demands of universal reason or moral fitness, that it was his only and sole reason, nor (still less) that it was his paramount and predominant reason for his action in question, that is, for his mode of couching the aforesaid Declaration in partial truth alone.

What leads to the conclusion with resistless force that Oldcorne’s alleged reason cannot have been his paramount, his predominant, reason is the simple, indisputable fact that such an aim so egregiously miscarried.

Therefore, in the case of so astute and clever a man, as all the evidence we have concerning Oldcorne to demonstration proves him to have been, it is rendered probable, to the degree of moral certainty, that the great casuist had some far stronger reason latent within him than the reason he chose to put forth for couching an answer to Humphrey Littleton, sounding in partial truth alone.

Besides the sufficient, indeed, yet inferior reason, grounded on the primal instinct of personal self-preservation, or, in other words, to put the matter bluntly, the mere brute instinct of not being entrapped, wisdom suggests that Oldcorne must — his moral character being what we know it was — have had a reason latent deep down within the depths of his conscious being, which was not only a sufficient but superior reason, not only a true but a sublime reason, for severing in this grave matter, and holding suspended, truth in thought from truth in action.

Yea, Father Oldcorne, I maintain, gave Humphrey Littleton the flanking, evasive answer that he did give him, notwithstanding the inevitable, possible, and even probable dangers attendant thereon, because he (Oldcorne) felt within himself, “to the finest fibre of his being,” a freedom, a three-fold freedom, which warranted, justified, and vindicated him in so answering.

Now this freedom was a three-fold freedom, because it was a thrice-purchased freedom.

And it was a thrice-purchased freedom because it had been purchased by the merits: —

(1) Of the personal, actual repentance of the revealing plotter himself. By the merits

(2) Of the imputed (or constructive) repentance of that penitent’s co-plotters. And by the merits

(3) Of the laudable action of Oldcorne himself.