Much more shall he suffer for having broken the
law, in the only possible way that it can be broken, by sin. This
peculiar violation draws after it a peculiar consequence of suffering,
penal and retributive. If a man gets typhoid fever in his house, we
sometimes say it is a _punishment_ on him for neglecting his drains,
even when the neglect was a mere piece of ignorance or inadvertence.
It is an evil consequence certainly,--the law, which he thought not
of, working itself out in the form of disease. But it is not properly
punishment: no natural law has been really broken: there has been no
guilt, and the suffering is not retributive and compensatory. It does
not go to restore the balance of the neglect. It is a lamentable
consequence, not a repayment. As, when man wrongs his fellow-man, he
makes with him an _involuntary contract_ (c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p.
106), to restore what he takes away: so in sinning against God, man
makes another involuntary contract, to pay back in suffering against
his will what he unduly takes in doing his own will against the will
of the Legislator. As St. Augustine says of Judas (Serm.
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