able to do, and as a Man meaning to correct, not encourage, Vice is able to do. If a lewd Fancy will entertain it self with the meer Ideas of Crime, where it is only with the utmost Severity condemned, Be the Crime to the Criminal, I see no reason to be afraid of doing Justice on that Account. A Man is to be executed for Sodomy; Nature and the Laws of God require it; Must not the Criminal die because all that see or hear of it must immediately form Ideas of the Crime in their Thoughts, nay, and perhaps may think criminally of it? This would give a loose to Wickedness indeed, and Men might Sin with most Freedom where their Crimes were too vile to be punished, because they were too gross to be named.
So when a Cloud its hasty Show'rs sends down,
The're meant to fructify and not to drown;
And in a Torrent if a Drunkard sink,
'Tis not the Flood that drowns him but the Drink.
But 'twould be hard because a Sinner's slain,
For fear of Drowning we should have no Rain.
Besides, it wou'd be a light escape; and some of our first Readers would triumph another way over the Author, if they could be satisfied that they had sinned in a manner so gross that he could not find Words to reprove them in; I mean, such Words as were fit for modest Ears to bear the hearing of. Our well known Friend G——— A———, with his three Brether, (as they call them in the North) who think themselves beyond the reach of Reproof, as they are out of the reach of Conscience, may find themselves mistaken here; and that if they will venturefor
