Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (4th ed, 1770, vol IV).djvu/55

Ch. 4. executive power of the tate, or the king and his government; fourthly, uch as more directly infringe the rights of the public or common wealth; and, latly, uch as derogate from thoe rights and duties, which are owing to particular individuals, and in the preervation and vindication of which the community is deeply intereted.

then, of uch crimes and midemenors, as more immediately offend Almighty God, by openly trangreing the precepts of religion either natural or revealed; and mediately, by their bad example and conequence, the law of ociety alo; which contitutes that guilt in the action, which human tribunals are to cenure.

I. Of this pecies the firt is that of apotacy, or a total renunciation of chritianity, by embracing either a fale religion or no religion at all. This offence can only take place in uch as have once profeed the true religion. The perverion of a chritian to judaim, paganim, or other fale religion, was punihed by the emperors Contantius and Julian with confication of goods ; to which the emperors Theodoius and Valentinian added capital punihment, in cae the apotate endeavoured to pervert others to the ame iniquity. A punihment too evere for any temporal laws to inflict: and yet the zeal of our ancestors imported it into this country; for we find by Bracton, that in his time apotates were to be burnt to death. Doubtles the preervation of chritianity, as a national religion, is, abtracted from it's own intrinic truth, of the utmot conequence to the civil tate: which a ingle intance will ufficiently demontrate. The belief of a future tate of rewards and punihments, the entertaining jut ideas of the moral attributes of the upreme being, and a firm peruaion that he uperintends and will finally compenate every action in human life (all which are clearly revealed in the doctrines, and forcibly inculcated by the precepts, of our aviour Chrit) thee are the grand Rh