22. Demonstration. Most of those considerations by which we confirmed the preceding theorem also look to this point and are fittingly employed to prove that which we now defend. Fittingly employed is the argument sought from God’s supreme dominion over men, and fittingly employed likewise is that which we drew either from the nature of the divine right or from the nature of the duties by which men are obliged.
To these is added the fact that, if it is not subject to reproach in civil society that the guilty are punished by positive penalties which will not cease before death, neither can it be subject to reproach that punitive action is taken against violators of the divine laws by positive punishments of such a kind that they last for as long as the guilty themselves exist.
Moreover, nothing inheres in positive and perpetual punishments which does not correspond to sin: not perpetuity, since guilt itself can be perpetual; not the fact that they inflict pain and create distress, since it is equitable that the illicit delight of sin be punished by pains and distresses. Therefore punishments which are positive and perpetual do not exceed the desert of sin; consequently they can be inflicted, and if they are in fact inflicted, there is available to the sinner no cause for a just complaint which is approved by reason.
This is all the more so because the use of that means by which men are most greatly deterred and are more effectively contained within the limits of their duties would perversely be denied to God. But a means of this kind does not differ from positive and perpetual punishments; for since man is led especially by the senses, he is moved more vehemently by those punishments which fall under the apprehension of the senses and the severity of which is established by experience.