The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy FawkesSpink, Henry
History
The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter, Being a Proof, with Moral Certitude, of the Authorship of the Document: Together with Some Account of the Whole Thirteen Gunpowder Conspirators, Including Guy Fawkes
Spink, Henry
Gunpowder Plot, 1605; Monteagle, William Parker, Baron, 1574 or 1575-1622
[Footnote A: Father Henry Garnet, S.J., landed in England in 1586 along
with the gifted Robert Southwell, whose prose and poetical works belong to
English literature. Father Weston was then the Jesuit Superior. Father
John Gerard landed, along with Father Edward Oldcorne, off the coast of
Norfolk, in August, 1588, shortly after the decisive fight with the
Spanish Armada, off Gravelines. As illustrating the conscientiousness and
courage of this Yorkshire Elizabethan Jesuit, the following quotation from
Foley, vol. iv., p. 210, may be of interest: “Father Oldcorne was employed
sometime in London by Father Garnet, diligently labouring in the quest and
salvation of souls. He was ever of a most ready wit, and endeavoured as
far as possible to adapt himself to the manner of those with whom he
lived. There were exceptions, however, in which, consumed with an ardent
zeal of asserting and defending the Divine honour, he could not refrain
from correcting those whom he heard uttering obscene and injurious
language either towards God or their superiors. When in London, in the
house of a Catholic gentleman, he struck with his fist and broke into
pieces a pane of stained or painted glass representing an indecent picture
of Venus and Mars, which he considered wholly unfit for the eyes of a
virtuous family.”
[The curious philosopher wonders whether this Elizabethan Catholic
gentleman, having been deprived of his “Venus and Mars” in such a
high-handed fashion, afterwards became anti-Jesuitical.]]
Therefore is it, alike by evidence and reason, borne in upon the mind of
the philosopher that, on grounds of probability so high as to afford
practical certitude, he may proceed to build his argument upon the
assumption that Edward Oldcorne was a man not only of intellectual acumen
but also of moral integrity, as has been already predicated of him.
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.
[Footnote A: Or, it may be said, Oldcorne separated concrete truth from
abstract truth, practical truth from speculative truth, holding the former
in solution, and putting into the hands of Littleton the latter alone, in
the form of a dangerous precipitate.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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