Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1839 edition. Excerpt: ...urged, yet finds himself not at liberty to advance farther than to state, that it seldom happened that death was denounced against any offences for which atonement was appointed. 2. It is sophistical; for, from the circumstances of atonement not being appointed in those cases in which death was peremptorily denounced, it is inferred, that no atonement conld be made where life was forfeited; whereas the true statement of the proposition evidently is, that life was forfeited where no atonement was permitted to be made. TtTs true, indeed, that death is not expressly denounced in those cases in which atonements were allowed; but this was because the atonement was permitted to arrest the sentence of the law; as appears particularly from this, that, where the prescribed atonement was not made, the law, no longer suspended in its natural operation, pronounced the sentence of death. The real nature of the case seems to be this: the rigid tendency of the law being to secure obedience, on pain of forfeiture of life, all such offences as were of so aggravated a kind as to preclude forgiveness were left under the original sentence of the law, while such as were attended with circumstances of mitigation were forgiven on the condition of a public and humble acknowledgment of the offence, by complying with certain prescribed modes of atonement. It should be remembered, also, that the law was not given at different times, so as that its denunciations and atonements should be promulged at different periods; both were announced at the same time, and, therefore, in such cases as admitted of pardon, the penalty being superseded by the atonement, the punishment strictly due to the offence is not denounced, and can only be collected now from the general...
