11. Demonstration. It was declared above,1 and is understood from an inspection of the nature of the matter, that a supreme prince can, with the rights of justice and equity preserved, define by an enacted law that the faculty of obtaining pardon be granted only within a certain time. Therefore God also will be able, with the rights of justice and equity preserved, to sanction by an enacted law that the time for obtaining pardon be circumscribed by the limits of the present life.
12. And why could he not? Perhaps because man has a right to obtain a longer time? But such a right can be imagined; it cannot be proved.
Moreover, if man had a right to obtain a longer time, I ask: who will appoint the limits of this time? Man himself? But it does not belong to man, who is subject to the law, to prescribe to the legislator the time during which it is lawful to hope for pardon.
Perhaps the very nature of things will appoint limits of this kind? Yet from the nature of things this one thing is had: once a violation of the law has been posited, the legislator is at liberty to execute in deed the sanction threatened and to take punitive action against the guilty according to the norm of the law. God alone therefore remains, who, according to the supreme right which he possesses, may define the limits within which pardon for the crime contracted can be obtained.
Rightly, therefore, did we say that nothing discordant, nothing which is disapproved by well-considered reason, is found in the fact that God willed the limits of the present life to be likewise the limits for obtaining pardon.