Book XII.
Chap. 4.sition would be directed to a kind of action that does not at all require it; the liberty of the subject would be subverted by arming the zeal of timorous, as well as of presumptuous conferences against him.
The mischief arises from a notion which some people have entertained of revenging the cause of the Deity. But we must honor the Deity, and leave him to avenge his own cause. In effect, were we to be directed by such a notion, where would be the end of punishments? If human laws are to avenge the cause of an infinite Being, they will be directed by his infinity, and not by the ignorance and caprice of man.
An historian[1] of Provence relates a fact, which furnishes us with an excellent description of the consequences that may arise in weak capacities from this notion of avenging the Deity's cause. A Jew was accused of having blasphemed against the blessed Virgin; and upon conviction, was condemned to be slead alive. A strange spectacle was then seen: gentlemen masked, with knives in their hands, ascended the scaffold, and drove away the executioner, in order to be the avengers themselves of the honor of the blessed Virgin.—I do not here chuse to anticipitate the reflections of the reader.
The second class consists of thole crimes which are prejudicial to morals. Such is the violation of public or private continency, that is, of the policy directing the manner in which the pleasure annexed to the union of bodies is to be enjoyed. The punishment of those crimes ought to be also derived from the nature of the thing; the privation of such advantages as society has attached to the purity of
- ↑ Farther Bougerel.
