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]