Note 167 — Chapter LXVI

— Now, as the conspirators were engaged in a joint-enterprise, it must be evident to every clear-minded thinker that the repentance of any one of the joint-plotters must have shed an imputed beneficent influence over and upon all the band. For just as no man liveth only to himself, and no man dieth only to himself, so, by a parity of reasoning, no man is morally resurrected only to himself. Therefore, the moment Christopher Wright was, in the pure eyes of Edward Oldcorne, freed from the leprosy of his sacrilegious-murderous crime — freed (1) by his owning to the same in word; (2) by his manifesting sorrow for the same in heart; and, above and beyond all, freed (3) by his making amends for the same in deed, through the earnest and part performance he had given and made of his unconquerable purpose of reversal, in assenting to the proposal of his listener to pen the revealing Letter — from that moment Christopher Wright, I say, and, through him (though in a secondary, subordinate, derivative sense), all the remaining twelve plotters, would rise up, as an army from the dead; would rise up and stand once more with head erect and in marching order — that noble posture and manly attitude which is ever the reward, sure and certain, of a recovered sense of justice, sincerity, truth.