The Anatomy of Melancholy

No man, Plato further adds, can punish his adversary as severely as God will punish those who oppress the wretched.

He judges again the case already judged, And imposes a heavier penalty.

If there is any religion, any God, and that God is just, it shall be so. If you believe the one, believe the other: “It will, it will”—it shall be so. Nemesis follows, “late, but in earnest.” Wait a little, and you will see God’s just judgement overtake him.

Rarely has Punishment, though lame of foot, Abandoned the criminal who goes ahead.

You will see Samuel’s words to Agag fulfilled: “Your sword has made many women childless; so shall your mother be childless among other women”: 1 Samuel 15:33. They will be treated as they have treated others. Conradin, that gallant Swabian prince, entered the kingdom of Naples with a well-prepared army, was captured by King Charles and put to death in the flower of his youth. A little later—“vengeance for Conradin’s death,” as Pandolfo Collenuccio calls it in book 5 of his History of Naples—King Charles’s own son, with two hundred nobles, was likewise captured and beheaded.

Not only in this, but in every other offence, “each will be punished through that in which he sins.” They shall suffer punishment of the same kind, in the same part, of a like nature: eye for eye or in the eye, head for head or in the head, persecution for persecution, lust through the consequences of lust. Let them march with standards flying, drums beating and trumpets sounding “taratantara”; let them sack cities, plunder countries, murder infants, violate virgins, destroy, burn, persecute and tyrannize. They and theirs shall finally be repaid in full, in the same measure, according to their deserts.

Few kings descend to Ceres’ son-in-law without slaughter and blood; Few tyrants die a bloodless death.

Few tyrants die in their beds; Stabbed or maimed, they hasten to hell.

Often, too, a low, contemptible fellow becomes the instrument of God’s justice to punish, torment and trouble them, as an ichneumon does a crocodile. They will be repaid according to the work of their hands, as Haman was hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. They will suffer sorrow of heart and be destroyed from under heaven: Lamentations 3:64–66. Only be patient: “He conquers who endures”; in the end you will be crowned.

“Yes, but this is hard to do: flesh and blood cannot bear it. It is hard, hard!” “No,” Chrysostom replies, “it is not hard, my friend”; it is not so grievous, nor would God have commanded it had it been so difficult. But how can it be done? Easily, he continues, if you look towards heaven, contemplate its beauty, and consider what God has promised those who endure injuries.