There is another point in connection with Catesby's confession which is worthy of notice. When he first told the other conspirators that he had obtained the consent of a Jesuit to a case similar to the Gunpowder Plot, he could at least honestly say that no priest had at that time directly _condemned_ the Gunpowder Plot itself as such; but, when Father Greenway had distinctly done so, he still seems to have left them under the impression that the Jesuit Fathers approved of the conspiracy "in general, though they knew not the particulars." To do this was to _act_ a lie! But it seems to have been after he had heard Greenway condemn the Plot in confession that he said something of the same kind to Sir Everard Digby for the first time, and in that case he _told_ a lie! In short, if--mind, I say if--after hearing Greenway's denunciation of the Plot, which, according to Father Pollen,[184] was in July, he gave Sir Everard Digby to understand, on first telling him of the plot, in the following September, that the scheme in general had the approval of the Jesuits, though they knew not the particulars, when he was well aware that he himself _had_ told them the main particulars, and was certain that they did _not_ approve of it, he obtained Sir Everard's adherence to the plot by a direct fraud, and acted the part of an unscrupulous scoundrel. [184] _Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot_, p. 13. Some devout people have endeavoured to find excuses for Catesby--not for his action with regard to the plot, of course, but for the condition of mind into which he fell preparatory to it--on the ground that he was a good Catholic. What is a good Catholic? I suppose a man who keeps God's commandments and obeys his Church. One commandment is, "Thou shalt do no murder"; and one of the Pope's orders, in Catesby's time, was that the Catholics in England were not to rise against the Government. But then it is said that Catesby went to Holy Communion every week. Be it so! Another historical character, one Judas Iscariot, committed a still worse crime immediately after receiving his First Communion. Robert Catesby was one of those most dangerous men to his own cause, a Catholic on Protestant principles. He acted in direct opposition to the commands of the Divine Founder of his Church, as well as to the precepts of the representative of that Divine Founder upon earth. He preferred his own private opinion to that of either. He considered his own Decalogue and Beatitudes juster and more sublime than the Almighty's, his own intentions for the welfare of the Church wiser than the Holy Father's, his own moral theology more orthodox than that of the Jesuits; and then this Protestant in practice--for Protestantism is not exclusively restricted to protests against such matters as the supremacy of the Pope or transubstantiation--took it upon himself to pose as a prominent champion of the Catholic Church.