Page:A Discourse of Constancy in Two Books Chiefly containing Consolations Against Publick Evils.pdf/249

128228 [sic] ballance out of the hands of the Heavenly Justice, and poise it with your own weights agreeable to your own apprehensions? For what else can you mean by that bold pronouncing upon the equality or inequality of crimes, otherwise than God hath done before you? You are therefore here Lipsius to consider of two things: First, that a true estimation of the crimes of others, neither can nor ought to be attempted by Man: For how shall he do it; that not so much as observes them? And which way shall he put an exact difference, betwixt those things which he hath not so much as seen? For you will easily grant it me that it is the Mind that sins; by the Body and senses indeed as its instruments, but yet so as that the main business and weight of the crime, doth in the mean time depend upon it self. This is so exactly true; that if it appear any one hath unwillingly sinned; he is clear of the sin. And Rh