CHAPTER LXII.

And how could this be?

It could be only by dint of a _two-fold knowledge_, a two-fold, warranting, justifying, vindicating knowledge, which this Priest and Jesuit held stored-up deep down within the depths of his conscious being, a knowledge _passive_ or receptive which had come to him “from without,” _ab extra_; a knowledge _active_ or self-caused which he had bestowed upon himself “from within,” _ab intra_.

Now, the passive knowledge “from without” was the knowledge Oldcorne had had from the penitent plotter of that penitent’s resolve to reveal the Plot to his lawful Sovereign by the most perfect means for so doing that by the human mind could be devised.

The active knowledge “from within” was the knowledge that Oldcorne had possessed, and was at that moment possessing, of his own sublimely conceived and magnificently executed act and deed: although even this active knowledge “from within” was itself _indirectly_ traceable to that penitent plotter’s repentant resolve and repentant will.[A]

[Footnote A: We know on the authority of Sir Edward Coke himself that one of the conspirators was supposed to have revealed the Plot, and indeed such _must_ have been inevitably the case. Now, the proved position of Thomas Ward in the work of communicating with Thomas Winter suggests that Ward was the diplomatic go-between. But it is obvious that Ward cannot have himself penned the Letter; for if he had been in the service of Elizabeth’s Government his handwriting would be known to the Government. Now, circumstantial evidence tends to prove that Father Oldcorne did. Therefore the relationship of priest and penitent and the machinery of the Tribunal of Penance is forthwith, naturally and easily, brought into play. Now, in these days of “_emancipated and free religious thought_,” it is difficult for us readily to realize the _stupendous_ force that the alleged supernatural facts of historical Christianity had upon _the mind of all those who lived consciously_ hemmed in, as it were, by an alleged supernatural tradition of Christianity, _whether_ Calvinistic _or_ Roman Catholic, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Those alleged facts were assumed and deliberately calculated upon as among the ruling and controlling _realities_ of daily life. Now, a Yorkshire Roman Catholic——especially one brought up in the Wright, Ward, Babthorpe, Ingleby, Mallory circle——might be easily frightened, nay, terrified, into confession and avowal of his crimes, and _therefore_ into satisfaction, and _therefore_ into reversal, by the mere fact that about the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 11th October (old style), 1605, when “examining his conscience” he came to realize the tremendous and awful wickedness of his two crimes, sacrilege and murder. For the Archangel “_Michael——who is like unto God_”——would be to _him_ a being as real and living and of transcendently greater _power_——an important consideration——than even the stern reality of the hangman of the gallows-tree and the ripping knife; while a close-natured, thoughtful Yorkshireman like Christopher Wright would vividly realize, with his shrewd instinct for values and tendencies, that, _unrepentant_, his ultimate fate——either here or hereafter——was not worth while the risking. For, on the one hand, he may have peradventure, consciously or unconsciously, argued there is the certainty of falling, sooner or later, into “the Hands of the Living God,” and of being by Him consigned to the charge of Michael, the Minister of His Justice; while, on the other, there is the going, _not_ to the chill, viewless wind, but to a sympathetic rational creature with a brain, heart, eyes, hands, and feet, and the getting _him_, in the solid reality of flesh and blood, to put a speedy stop, here and now, to the whole unhappy business, and so save further trouble. (A man of middle age, well educated, belonging to an old Yorkshire Roman Catholic family that “had never lost the Faith,” told a relative, not long ago, that “after being on the spree” he should have certainly committed a great crime had he not been stayed by the knowledge that, if he did so, “_he would go plump into Hell_.” I mention this to show how, at least, sometimes the Catholic conscience works even in these “enlightened” days. Hence, the antecedent probability of the truth of my suggested solution of _how_ the revealing conspirator was motived to reveal the conspiracy. For an Inquiry into the Gunpowder Plot is a great philosophical study of human _motives_ as well as of _probabilities_; and the case of Christopher Wright (_ex hypothesi_) is, in relation to the example just cited, an _à fortiori_ case.)]