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  • Writer's picturebrandon corley

Peter Martyr Vermigli on the Punishment of Adultery

Updated: May 13, 2022


In his Common Places II.XI, Vermigli has a very long section on the punishment of adultery and what it ought to be. He gives a very detailed history of the punishment of adultery across ancient and diverse nations as well as the opinions of many church fathers on the matter. He then argues for equality of punishment between the man and the woman who commit adultery and argues that the punishment for adultery should be death, both in accordance with the general equity of Biblical Law. This is in accordance with the same view held by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, John Knox, William Perkins, Franciscus Junius, Martin Bucer, Henrich Bullinger, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Cartwright, John Downame, George Gillespie, Henry Barrow, John Cotton and seemingly, John Gill, for all of whom I might eventually post sections of their writings on the matter. We have now another piece of evidence that this was a common view among the Reformed and Puritans and is indeed a part of natural law, which all men have written upon their hearts as I surely know it has always been on mine but has been obscured to some in our day due to the searing of conscience by enlightenment liberalism and by historical revisionists who wish to remove general equity from civil penalties. Here is the section:








Note that Vermigli above in 144-145 accuses Augustine of what we have before called a "one-kingdom ecclesiastical antinomian theonomy"









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