, which would be scandalized by disorder if the chastisement did
not contribute towards restoring order. One can also consult what Grotius
wrote against the Socinians, of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ, and the
answer of Crellius thereto.

74. Thus it is that the pains of the damned continue, even when they no
longer serve to turn them away from evil, and that likewise the rewards of
the blessed continue, even when they no longer serve for strengthening them
in good. One may say nevertheless that the damned ever bring upon
themselves new pains through new sins, and that the blessed ever bring upon
themselves new joys by new progress in goodness: for both are founded on
the _principle of the fitness of things_, which has seen to it that affairs
were so ordered that the evil action must bring upon itself a chastisement.
There is good reason to believe, following the parallelism of the two
realms, that of final causes and that of efficient causes, that God has
established in the universe a connexion between punishment or reward and
bad or good action, in accordance wherewith the first should always be
attracted by the second, and virtue and vice obtain their reward and their
punishment in consequence of the natural sequence of things, which contains
still another kind of pre-established harmony than that which appears in
the communication between the soul and the body. For, in a word, all that
God does, as I have said already, is harmonious to perfection. Perhaps then
this principle of the fitness of things would no longer apply to beings
acting without true freedom or exemption from absolute necessity; and in
that case corrective justice alone would be administered, and not punitive
justice. That is the opinion of the famous Conringius, in a dissertation he
published on what is just. And indeed, the reasons Pomponazzi employed in
his book on fate, to prove the usefulness of chastisements and rewards,
even though all should come about in our actions by a fatal necessity,[163]
concern only amendment and not satisfaction, [Greek: kolasin ou timorian].
Moreover, it is only for the sake of outward appearances that one destroys
animals accessary to certain crimes, as one razes the houses of rebels,
that is, to inspire terror. Thus it is an act of corrective justice,
wherein punitive justice has no part at all.

75. But we will not amuse ourselves now by discussing a question more
curious than necessary, since we have shown suf