I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by
cuckolds?
In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned
at the city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole
populace. This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the
chosen nation, the cherished nation, the only one which was right when
all the others were wrong.
To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented
by her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have
her stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their
injustice, that he laughed at them by writing on the ground with his
finger, that he quoted the old Hebraic proverb--"He that is without sin
among you, let him first cast a stone at her"; that then they all
retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the older they were the more
adulteries had they committed.
The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adulteress
is related only in the Gospel of St. John, that it was not inserted
there until later. Leontius, Maldonat, affirm that it is not to be found
in a single ancient Greek copy; that none of the twenty-three early
commentators mentions it. Origen, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom,
Theophilact, Nonnus, do not recognize it at all. It is not to be found
in the Syriac Bible, it is not in Ulphilas' version.
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