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Some, however, of those against whom we are defending the city of
God, think it unjust that any man be doomed to an eternal punishment
for sins which, no matter how great they were, were perpetrated in a
brief space of time; as if any law ever regulated the duration of the
punishment by the duration of the offence punished! Cicero tells us
that the laws recognize eight kinds of penalty,-damages,
imprisonment, scourging, reparation, disgrace, exile, death,
slavery. Is there any one of these which may be compressed into a
brevity proportioned to the rapid commission of the offence, so that no
longer time may be spent in its punishment than in its perpetration,
unless, perhaps, reparation? For this requires that the offender
suffer what he did, as that clause of the law says, "Eye for eye,
tooth for tooth." For certainly it is possible for an offender to
lose his eye by the severity of legal retaliation in as brief a time as
he deprived another of his eye by the cruelty of his own lawlessness.
But if scourging be a reasonable penalty for kissing another man's
wife, is not the fault of an instant visited with long hours of
atonement, and the momentary delight punished with lasting pain? What
shall we say of imprisonment? Must the criminal be confined only for
so long a time as he spent on the offence for which he is committed? or
is not a penalty of many years' confinement imposed on the slave who
has provoked his master with a word, or has struck him a blow that is
quickly over? And as to damages, disgrace, exile, slavery, which
are commonly inflicted so as to admit of no relaxation or pardon, do
not these resemble eternal punishments in so far as this short life
allows a resemblance? For they are not eternal only because the life
in which they are endured is not eternal; and yet the crimes which are
punished with these most protracted sufferings are perpetrated in a very
brief space of time. Nor is there any one who would suppose that the
pains of punishment should occupy as short a time as the offense; or
that murder, adultery, sacrilege, or any other crime, should be
measured, not by the enor mity of the injury or wickedness, but by the
length of time spent in its perpetration. Then as to the award of
death for any great crime, do the laws reckon the punishment to consist
in the brief moment in which death is inflicted, or in this, that the
offender is eternally banished from the society of the living? And
just as the punishment of the first death cuts men off from this present
mortal city, so does the punishment of the second death cut men off
from that future immortal city. For as the laws of this present city
do not provide for the executed criminal's return to it, so neither is
he who is condemned to the second dearth recalled again to life
everlasting. But if temporal sin is visited with eternal punishment,
how, then, they say, is that true which your Christ says, "With
the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you
again?" and they do not observe that "the same measure" refers, not
to an equal space of time, but to the retribution of evil or, in other
words, to the law by which he, who has done evil suffers evil.
Besides, these words could be appropriately understood as referring to
the matter of which our Lord was speaking when He used them, viz.,
judgments and condemnation. Thus, if he who unjustly judges and
condemns is himself justly judged and condemned, he receives "with the
same measure" though not the same thing as he gave. For judgment he
gave, and judgment he receives, though the judgment he gave was
unjust, the judgment he receives just.
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