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To imitate such a God would be to take as a model a rebellious son, who wrests his father's throne from him and then mutilates his body; it is imitating a debauchee and adulterer, an incestuous, intemperate man, whose conduct would cause any reasonable mortal to blush.
Whether the Catholic religion is the worst of religions or the best of religions, it is the religion to which those in grievous trouble, whether through misfortune or their own fault, most frequently have recourse; a religion which offers salvation and solace even to the adulterer, the thief, the murderer, or the perpetrator of any other crimes, on condition of contrition and firm purpose of amendment.
Who does not know, that he that is an adulterer is not on that account a murderer, a thief, and a false witness, or wishes to be so?
And it is also true, without doubt, that the fallen or the unfaithful Catholic is an infinitely more degraded member of humanity than the fallen Pagan or Protestant; that the monumental criminals of history are Catholic criminals, and that the monsters of the world Henry VIII for example, sacrilegious, murderer, and adulterer; Martin Luther, whose printed table-talk is unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth, perjurer, tyrant, and unchaste were persons who had had all that the Catholic Church could give them: the standards of her teaching, the guidance of her discipline, and the grace of her sacraments.
Let the duke be a traitor; the son, my king, is by far a worse criminal!" "Is there, then, a still worse and more execrable crime than to be a traitor to his king and master, and to speak of the anointed of the Lord without reverence and love?" "Yes, your majesty, there is a still worse crime; and of that I accuse the Earl of Surrey. He is an adulterer!"
Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other "Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom."
But he replied, that he entertained no such thoughts in the former life: he wished to reason whether the case was so or not; but he was told that truth does not admit of reasonings, since they favor the delights of the flesh against those of the spirit, the quality of which latter delights he was ignorant of; and that he ought first to think about the things which I had told him, because they are true; or to think from the well-known maxim, that no one should do to another what he is unwilling another should do to him; and thus, if any one had in such a manner violated his wife, whom he had loved, as is the case in the beginning of every marriage, and he had then been in a state of wrath, and had spoken from that state, whether he himself also would not then have detested adulteries, and being a man of strong parts, would not have confirmed himself against them more than other men, even to condemning them to hell; and being the general of an army, and having brave companions, whether he would not, in order to prevent disgrace, either have put the adulterer to death, or have driven the adulteress from his house.
A criminal code was drawn up, meting out executions, mutilations, and floggings with a barbaric zeal. The blasphemer was to be instantly hanged, the adulterer was to be scourged with whips of rhinoceros hide, the thief was to have his right hand and his left foot hacked off in the marketplace.
But if the adulterer thinks his adultery bad but his pleasure good, and the murderer thinks the murder bad but the money he gets by it good, and the man who does evil to an enemy thinks that to do evil is bad but to punish his enemy good, and if the soul commits all its sins in that way, then the evils are done for the sake of goodness.
"Not only could women be dowered with, or inherit, fiefs, and transmit a legal title to them to their own children, but a childless woman was even fully empowered to adopt an heir. Yoritomo had been the first to sanction this broadminded and liberal principle. In Kamakura, an adulterer was stripped of half of his fief if he held one; and if he had none, he was banished.
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