CHAPTER LXVI.

Now, this conclusion leads inevitably to the further conclusion that Edward Oldcorne must have had latent within him, deep down within the depths of his conscious being, a particular knowledge, _as distinct from a general knowledge, a private knowledge as distinct from a public knowledge_, not indeed of this Plot as a plot, but of the Plot _after_ it had been, _when_ it had been, and _as_ it had been _first transmuted and transformed, by the causes and processes hereinbefore mentioned: transmuted and transformed into an instrument, sure and certain for the temporal salvation of his fellow-men_.

Yea, _because_ Edward Oldcorne’s noblest mental faculty, his conscience, gazing with eagle-eye, sun-filled, yet undazzled and undismayed, upon absolute truth was able unshrinkingly and calmly to bear witness to the other indivisible parts of his rational nature, that _his_ mind in relation to that fell enterprise, which from first to last must have “made the angels weep,” was a mind not only of passive innocence, but of active rectitude, _therefore_ must he have felt himself to be not barely, but abundantly _free_. Free, because he knew there was no mortal in this world, and no being in the world to come, to condemn _him_ at the bar of eternal Justice; nay, none rightly even to be so much as his accuser: free to survey the baleful scheme purely speculatively: free, orally to express the results of that survey, _either as to whole or part, in abstracto, in the abstract merely; and this notwithstanding the risk of misinterpretation from his questioner’s “want of thought,” or “want of heart_.”

For everlastingly was it the truth, that none could gainsay nor resist, that in relation to _this_ matter, at any rate, it was the lofty privilege of Edward Oldcorne——indeed a man, if ever there were such, “elect and precious”——to have been made “a white soul:” to have been made a soul like unto “a star that dwelt apart.”

_Res ipsa loquitur._ Yea, the words of Edward Oldcorne speak for themselves. And from those words evident is it that it was the kingly prerogative of this disciplined, self-repressed, humblest of men, _to know the truth as to the once atrocious plan: to know the truth and to be free_.

For his language implies, and, his mind and his character being what they were, his language is intelligible on none other supposal than this: That at the very moment when his tongue gave utterance to this now famous flanking, evasive answer to his inquirer, _he, even he, had possession of a power, a knowledge, a living consciousness, that he had been exalted to be the chosen agent of that Supreme Power of the Universe_, to Whom by infinite right, Vengeance belongs: _the chosen agent whereby the aforetime, but then no longer, stupendous Gunpowder Treason Plot had been, to all eternity, overthrown, frustrated, and brought to nought_.[167]