CHAPTER LXIII.

But, it may be plausibly objected, if it were of such dangerous tendency _indiscriminately_ to give utterance to bare, abstract, moral principles only, how came it to pass, then, that Oldcorne, who was a good man, morally, as well as a clever man, intellectually, suffered himself _thus_ to act when questioned by Humphrey Littleton respecting the moral lawfulness, or otherwise, of the Gunpowder Plot?

Now, Oldcorne, as we have already seen in his Declaration quoted above, has recorded a——that is one——reason why he left Littleton _in abstracto_——that is furnished with truth in the abstract merely. And beyond a doubt, as subsequent events so signally proved, the astute Jesuit’s judgment of Littleton’s character had not erred one whit.

Littleton, as Oldcorne justly feared, was a “dangerous fellow,” one who was likely to entrap the innocent, and one who was, therefore, not entitled, either in Justice or in that more refined kind of justice called Equity, to have his question dealt with by anything other than a flanking movement; or, in other words, by anything other than such an intellectual manœuvre as would _turn aside the question_ Littleton had elected to propound to the great mental strategist——as would turn aside the question Littleton had elected to propound, on the face of it, probably, and as the event proved, certainly, from sinister motives and with crooked aims.

Hence, _partly_ because of his questioner’s inferred insincerity and pernicious purposes _did Oldcorne sever speculative truth in thought from concrete truth in action_; or, in other words, _Oldcorne gave to Littleton an answer “sounding” in partial truth alone_.