Vindication

“ Few persons now exist who have more than a vague recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid respectability and social influence. ”

“ Listen to Jesus Christ Himself when He tells us: "And if a man will contend with thee in the judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him," for that is more advantageous than going to law. Alas, that the machinery of justice should be the cause of the commission of sin! How many souls indeed are damned by such false oaths, by hatreds, by cheating, and by vengeance! ”

“ For the sake of perspicuity, let us call one vengeance, or vindictive judgment, and the other [pg 592] chastisement, or disciplinary judgment. In vindictive judgment, God is to be contemplated as taking vengeance on his enemies, so as to exert his wrath against them, to confound, dissipate, and reduce them to nothing. We consider it, therefore, strictly speaking, to be the vengeance of God, when the punishment he inflicts is attended with his indignation. ”

“ Has reason got anything to show in justification of this preliminary sacrifice of a conviction on which men have to act, whatever their theories may be? Must I surrender the conviction, that when I am seeing or touching I am actually having revealed to me something that is extended and solid, and that, as such, must be more and other than the private sensations and ideas of the person that is seeing and touching? Must this conviction, and others like it, on which human experience practically depends, be all sacrificed on the altar of authority and conjecture? ”

“ He is just. As he has authority to avenge wrong, so it is his nature, and property, and honour. This also is implied in the title here given to him and repeated with such an emphasis, O God! to whom vengeance belongs, who wilt not suffer might always to prevail against right. This is a good reason why we must not avenge ourselves, because God has said, Vengeance is mine; and it is daring presumption to usurp his prerogative and step into his throne, Rom. ”

“ Yet let our conclusion be that of the Judge of the earth Himself when he says vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord, and who mixes mercy with judgment, and makes the wrath of man to praise him in pardon as well as by punishment. ”

“ And upon this St Gregory says, that " conscientia accusat, ratio judical timor ligat, dolor excruciat [26] my conscience is to accuse me of all my sins without omitting any one. My reason is to judge what I merit for them, sentencing me to be worthy of great punishment for having committed them. The fear of Almighty God and of His rigorous judgment is to bind me, and to oblige me humbly to undergo what penance soever reason shall dictate and the confessor shall impose upon me. ”

“ My Lord, legism, or jurisprudence, are sufficiently understood to render it indisputable that punishments cannot be vindicatory or retrospective, and less than either, vindictive. All religious prosecutions seek only for revenge. ”

“ VINDICI In that disguise, I sent from the duke's son, Tried you, you, and found you base metal As any villain might have done.
[GRATIANA] Oh, no, No tongue but yours could have bewitch'd me so.
VINDICI Oh, nimble in damnation, quick in tune; There is no devil could strike fire so soon! I am confuted in a word.
[GRATIANA] Oh, sons, Forgive me; to myself I'll prove more true: You that should honour me, I kneel to you.
VINDICI A mother to give aim to her own daughter.
HIPPOLITO True, brother, how far beyond nature 'tis, Tho' many mothers do't. ”

“ VINDICI My honoured lord.
LUSSURIOSO Away! Prithee forsake us; Hereafter we'll not know thee.
VINDICI Not know me, my lord? Your lordship cannot choose.
LUSSURIOSO Be gone, I say: thou art a false knave.
VINDICI Why, the easier to be known, my lord.
LUSSURIOSO Push, I shall prove too bitter with a word, Make thee a perpetual prisoner, And lay this ironage upon thee!
VINDICI Mum, For there's a doom would make a woman dumb. [Aside] Missing the bastard, next him, the wind's come about; Now 'tis my brother's turn to stay, mine to go out.
Exit Vindici.
LUSSURIOSO H'as greatly mov'd me. ”

“ Why should I go to the law courts to take part in the trial and punishment of men because they have sinned, knowing, if I am a Christian, that the law of vengence is replaced by the law of love, and, if I am an educated man, that punishments do not reform, but only deprave those on whom they are inflicted? ”

“ Take care, my dear brethren; it is only the first step which costs the effort. Once in the prison of the sin, it is very difficult, indeed, to break out of it.... But, you are thinking, I do not really believe that there are many who would be capable of hiding their sins because they would be too much troubled by them. Ah, my dear brethren, if I had to affirm on oath whether there were or were not such people, I would not hesitate to say that there are at least five or six listening to me who are consumed by remorse for their sins and who know that what I say is true. ”

“ This is what will make your penance meritorious and pleasing to God. I repeat that we should always carry out our penance with the true desire to give up the sin altogether, no matter what it may cost us, even if it involves death itself. If we have not these dispositions, very far from satisfying the justice of God, we will outrage it again, which would make us even more guilty. ”

“ With a vindictive person we justify his resentment and anger; we justify his guilt in his mind, by countenancing the justice of his accusations; we spare his passion in exaggerating the injury and fault of his enemy. ”

“ I don't think I had another test during that meeting.
Through this peculiar experience I learned the difference between soul-burden and condemnation and between accusation and conviction, as I had never been able to comprehend it before, although I thought I had understood this difference measurably well. Many dear souls have been troubled on these subjects, mistaking soul-burden for condemnation and accusation for conviction. A clear understanding of the difference between these soul experiences will save us from many unnecessary trials. I have been thankful ever since for God's teaching. ”

“ We should perform our penance overwhelmed with joy at being able to satisfy God, Whom we have offended, and at finding such an easy means of effacing our sins which should have earned eternal sufferings for us. Something which you should never forget is that all the time you are fulfilling your penance, you should be saying to God: "My God, I unite this slight penance to that which Jesus Christ my Saviour has offered to You for my sins." ”

“ You must consider, too, whether you have sung bad songs, or brought in bad books, or whether you have given bad counsel, as, for instance, advising someone that he should take his revenge on someone else, should exact satisfaction by force. Consider, too, whether you have ever taken anything from a next-door neighbour and neglected to pay it back, whether you have neglected to give some alms which you had been told to give or make some restitution which your parents, who are dead, should have made. ”

“ As there is a kind of commutation in favors, when, to wit, a man gives thanks for a favor received, so also is there commutation in the matter of offenses, when, on account of an offense committed against another, a man is either punished against his will, which pertains to vindictive justice, or makes amends of his own accord, which belongs to penance, which regards the person of the sinner, just as vindictive justice regards the person of the judge. ”

“ And in a while, having read these papers, I laid them by and rising, stumbled towards the open casement.
"Well, my lord?" says she in strange, breathless fashion, "And what now?"
"Why now," says I, wearily, "it seems my vengeance is yet to seek."
"Vengeance?" she cried, "Ah, God pity thee! Doth life hold for thee nought better?"
"Nought!"
"Vengeance is a consuming fire!"
"So seek I vengeance!"
"O Martin Conisby, bethink you! Vengeance is but a sickness of the mind—a wasting disease—"
"So seek I vengeance!" ”

“ The punishment of a child by a parent, or of a pupil by a teacher, ought certainly, one would think, to exclude the element of vindictive retribution altogether, and to be employed solely with reference to the salutary influences that may be expected from it in time to come. If the injunction "Vengeance is mine, I will repay it, saith the Lord" is to be recognized at all, it certainly ought to be acknowledged here. ”

“ The sacerdotal authority wielded its powerful sway.
"A crime! a crime!" gasped Louise, and the convulsive tremor seized her anew. "Surely it is a greater crime to drive me to my death."
"The laws of nature are sacred," said the vicar, his brow flushing, a diagonal vein starting out upon it; "they may not be set aside. All you can do is humbly to submit to the Divine law." ”

“ The killings and house-burnings of an earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson. The appeals de pace et plagis and of mayhem became, or rather were in substance, the action of trespass which is still familiar to lawyers. /2/ But as the compensation recovered in the appeal was the alternative of vengeance, we might expect to find its scope limited to the scope of vengeance. Vengeance imports a feeling of blame, and an opinion, however distorted by passion, that a wrong has been done. ”

“ That you are the son of an Italian gardener and his wife. Courage, my son; it might have been worse. But I know nothing positively; I have constructed a theory out of Vincenza's self-contradictions; it may be true; it may be false. Of one thing I would remind you; that as you have given up your position in England and Scotland, you have no responsibility in the matter. You have done exactly what the law would have required you to do had it been proved that you were Vincenza's son. ”

“ Hall Judge.-'In this case, the guilt or innocence of the prisoner is as little the subject of enquiry, as the merits of any case can be, when it is brought before this Court on a collateral question of law. ”

“ An involuntary mishap has taken place. Indeed, what mishap is voluntary? And now those who have made up this suit against him, carrying with it the penalty of death, have turned his mishap into matter of accusation. ”

“ When found out disgrace the name of man;
Let those who steal, repent and sin no more,
Ere Law decrees, it’s vengeance on them pour:
From trifling things, we greater ills pursue,
Till the Law’s fangs are brought within our view ”

“ He traced with ghastly interest the different paths by which vengeance converged upon the guilty woman, and saw with what careful method her crime had prepared its own punishment. “God grant,” said he, “that she may live to know what love and pity did to save her from the horror of her penalty!” ”

“ I have said that we should never content ourselves with the penance which our confessor imposes upon us because it is nothing, or almost nothing, if we compare it with what our sins really deserve. If our confessor is so very lenient with us, it is only lest he might give us a distaste for the work of our salvation. If you really have your salvation at heart, you should impose penances upon yourself. ”

“ Know for certain, that that God whom I have served, and for whose cause I now suffer, will avenge me; for vengeance is the Lord’s, and he will repay it one way or other, except thou speedily repentest.’ At this saying the justice began to tremble, and crying out, said, ‘I will do you no more hurt than I will do my own soul. ”

“ The duty of public persons, such as judges, is a much stricter one and pertains to the virtue of vindictive justice, which is a form of commutative justice; whereas vengeance is only a virtue annexed to justice (see above, 2141 sqq.) ”

“ Judgment must reside on the brow, affection and fancy beam in the eye, and humanity curve the check, or vain is the sparkling of the finest eye or the elegantly turned finish of the fairest features: whilst in every motion that displays the active limbs and well-knit joints, grace and modesty should appear. But this fair assemblage is not to be brought together by chance; it is the reward of exertions met to support each other; for judgment can only be acquired by reflection, affection by the discharge of duties, and humanity by the exercise of compassion to every living creature. ”

“ Every crime bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.
In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of Vincennes. ”

“ I can not support the life I lead with you; an angel could not bear it. Once more, let me be judged if I am guilty, or allow me to return to Touraine. It is you who have ruined me in attaching me to your person. ”

“ Those of you who confess your guilt must leave the priesthood, but I will give you other clothes, and set you free without punishment. Those who say they are innocent must prove their innocence by the diving-test. ”

“ If they find a confessor who sees that their dispositions are not good and he refuses them Absolution, you will then find them thundering against him, justifying themselves for all they are worth for having tried and failed to obtain the Sacrament. They will speak evil about him. They know very well why they have been refused and left in their sinful state, but, as they know, too, the confessor can do nothing to grant them what they want, so they get satisfaction by saying anything they wish. Carry on, children of this world, carry on with your daily round ”