Though here I leave the my own tradition of Westminster and Puritanism (which gave birth to Baptists of London) to go look into the stream of Anglicanism, we find that even there we find agreement with my assessment of the Reformed understanding of general equity. Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was no theologian, but he was a committed Anglican and widely respected and influential English jurist.
After speaking about rape, which he says it to be punished with…you guessed it, death, he then moves on to the even worse and most gross crimes of sodomy and bestiality:
WHAT has been here observed, especially with regard to the manner of proof, which ought to be the more clear in proportion as the crime is the more detestable, may be applied to another offense, of a still deeper malignity; the infamous crime against nature, committed either with man or beast. A crime, which ought to be strictly and impartially proved, and then as strictly and impartially punished. But it is an offense of so dark a nature, so easily charged, and the negative so difficult to be proved, that the accusation should be clearly made out: for, if false, it deserves a punishment inferior only to that of the crime itself.
I WILL not act so disagreeable part, to my readers as well as myself, as to dwell any longer upon a subject, the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature. It will be more eligible to imitate in this respect the delicacy of our English law, which treats it, in its very indictments, as a crime not fit to be named; “peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum” [“that horrible crime not to be named among Christians”]. A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: “ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, jubemus insurgere leges, armari jura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt, vel qui futuri sunt, rei.” [“Where that crime is found, which it is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword, that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments.”] Which leads me to add a word concerning its punishment.
THIS the voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God, determine to be capital. Of which we have a signal instance, long before the Jewish dispensation, by the destruction of two cities by fire from heaven: so that this is an universal, not merely a provincial, precept. And our ancient law in some degree imitated this punishment, by commanding such miscreants to be burnt to death; though Fleta says they should be buried alive: either of which punishments was indifferently used for this crime among the ancient Goths. But now the general punishment of all felonies is the same, namely, by hanging: and this offense (being in the times of popery only subject to ecclesiastical censures) was made single felony by the statute 25 Hen. VIII. c. 6. and felony without benefit of clergy by statute 5 Eliz. c. 17. And the rule of law herein is, that, if both are arrived at years of discretion, agentes et consentientes pari poena plectantur [the perpetrator and consenting party are punished the same]