or a hitherto decent and orderly citizen were taken red-handed in
murder. If however God deigns to draw the offender to repentance, and
to pardon him, the balance is restored. Thus everything finally
depends on man being free from guilt of grievous transgression at the
instant of death, or at the end of his period of probation, whenever
and wherever that end may come.

_Reading_.--Lessius, _De perfectionibus divinis_, 1.xiii., c. xxvi.,
nn. 183, seq.


SECTION III.--_Of Punishment Retrospective and Retributive_.


1. The doctrine of the last section might stand even in the mind of
one who held that all punishment is probational, and destined for the
amendment of him who undergoes it, to humble him, to awaken his sense
of guilt, and to make him fear to transgress again. On this theory of
punishment, the man who in his last probational suffering refuses to
amend, must be let drop out of existence as incorrigible, and so
clearly his final state is one of misery. The theory is not
inconsistent with _final_ punishment, but with _eternal_ punishment,
unless indeed we can suppose a creature for all eternity to refuse,
and that under stress of torment, a standing invitation to repentance.
It is however a peculiar theory, and opposite to the common tradition
of mankind, which has ever been to put gross offenders to death, not
as incorrigible, not simply as refuse to be got rid of, but that their
fate may be a _deterrent_ to others. Punishment, in this view, is
_medicinal_ to the individual, and _deterrent_ to the community.
Eternal punishment has been defended on the score of its _deterrent_