published in 1610. In 1613 Dr. Robert Abbott, a Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and Regius Professor of Divinity at that University, wrote his “Antilogia” as a reply to Eudæmon-Joannes’ “Apologia.” It would be a boon to historical students if both the “Apologia” and the “Antilogia” were “Englished” by some competent hand. Abbott was made Bishop of Salisbury, partly on account of the learning he displayed in his “Antilogia.” He was a Calvinist, and a vigorous writer, being styled “the hammer of Popery and Arminianism.”
Dr. Lancelot Andrewes (in answer to Cardinal Bellarmine) and Isaac Casaubon also contributed to the literature of the controversies anent the Plot, and modern editions of their works with notes are desiderata. Casaubon is best known, at the present day, through his “Life,” by Mark Pattison; Andrewes, through the late Dr. R. W. Church’s “Lecture,” now in “The Pascal” volume (Macmillan) of that judicious and learned man.
[170] — See Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., p. 120, quoting “Apologia,” p. 200.
Sir Everard Digby was the only conspirator who pleaded “guilty,” and he was arraigned by a different Indictment from that which charged the rest of the surviving conspirators.
[171] — My contention is that the conclusion is inevitable to the discerning mind that the sphinx-like nescience — the face set like a flint — with which Oldcorne met Littleton’s inquiry, displays indisputable evidence of a sub-consciousness on Oldcorne’s part, of what? Of a special, private, official knowledge (as distinct from a general, public, personal knowledge) of what had been intended to be the executed Gunpowder Plot, but which Oldcorne himself had thwarted, and so prevented everlastingly any one single human creature being able, even for the infinitesimal part of an instant, to contemplate “post factum” — after the fact — and in the concrete; which, indeed, judged “from the outside,” and as the bulk of mankind are entitled to judge it, was the only side or aspect of the baleful enterprise that was of practical and, therefore, to them, of paramount personal consequence. The conspirator John Grant expressed the state of the case exactly when he said in Westminster Hall, after being asked what he could say wherefore judgment of death should not be pronounced against him, “He was guilty of a conspiracy intended, but never effected.”
[172] — See Butler’s “Memoirs of English Catholics,” vol. ii., p. 260. See also Gerard’s “Narrative.” — It is possible (according to Gerard) that Oldcorne may have been even still more cruelly tortured, namely, as Dr. Lingard says, during five hours for each of five successive days; but to me, humanly speaking, this is incredible.
[173] — Father Edward Oldcorne and Brother Ralph Ashley are both, along with others, now styled by Rome, “Venerable Servants of God.” The Decree introducing the cause of these “English Martyrs,” dated 1886, and signed by the present Pope, Leo XIII., is kept in the English College at Rome, where Oldcorne had himself entered as a student a little more than three hundred and four years previously, namely, in 1582.
Through the truly kind courtesy of the Right Rev. Monsignor Giles, D.D., President of the English College, Rome, the writer was privileged to see, along with the Rev. Father Darby, O.S.B., and some other gentlemen, this Decree in the afternoon of Saturday, the 13th of October, 1900, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor, King of England. In the forenoon of the same day the first great band of the English Pilgrims for the Holy Year, the Year of Jubilee, had received, in St. Peter’s, the Papal Blessing, amid great rejoicing, the apse or place of honour in this, the largest Church in Christendom, being graciously accorded to these fifteen hundred British Catholic subjects of Her late Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.
[174] — As to the precise teaching of the theologians of Father Oldcorne’s Church respecting the famous dictum of St. Augustine of Hippo, “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” see the book of the once celebrated Douay theologian, Dr. Hawarden, entitled, “Charity and Truth; or Catholics not uncharitable in saying that none are saved out of the Catholic Communion, because the rule is not universal” (1728). And, again, that great Yorkshire son of St. Philip Neri, Dr. Frederic William Faber, an ultramontane papist of the ultramontane papists, has thus recorded his own potent testimony on this subject in his singularly able and beautiful work, entitled, “The Creator and the Creature,” first edition, p. 368.
Dr. Faber says: “We are speaking of Catholics. If our thoughts break their bounds and run out beyond the Church, nothing that has been said has been said with any view to those without. I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that God is infinitely merciful to every soul; that no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and as to those who may be lost, I confidently