XXVIII. All punish∣ments are a∣warded accor∣ding to mens merits.
By what hath been already said, it appears, That in punishments two things are consi∣derable, First, The merit of the Crime; secondly, The profit that redounds by the pu∣nishment. As to the former, Nemo puniendus est ultra meritum, No man ought to be punish∣ed beyond the merit of his offence: for, as I said before, There ought to be an equality be∣tween the sin and the punishment, according to that of Horace,
Whereunto we may add that of Cicero to Brutus,* 1.2 There is (saith he) a moderation to be used as well in punishing as in other things. And therefore Papinianus calls punishment the valua∣tion of a crime. And† 1.3 Aristides saith, That it is agreeable to humane nature that there should be bounds prescribed, beyond which revenge should never stray, (in imitation of God himself, who when he proceeds to Judgment, is said to lay Judgment to the Rule, and Righteousness to the Ballance, as if he would retale it, as it were, by weight and mea∣sure.) But Demosthenes in his Epistle for Lycurgus's Children, doth not approve of such an equality as is barely in weights and measures, but with respect had to the purpose and in∣tent of the Delinquent; and then he concludes, That within the Bounds of Merit, all sins may be punished more or less, so far forth as the punishment shall be thought profit∣able.* 1.1—adsit Regula peccatis, quae poenas irroget aequas.Let sins have Rules, which equal pains require, And not plague petty faults with Rods of Wire.