Patrick Fairbairn on the sanctity of life and capital punishment for murder

[Reformed Covenanter]

It was made very clear, however, by other statutes on this subject, that when actual murder had been committed, no advantage was to accrue to the perpetrator from the cities of refuge; though he might have fled thither, he was, on the proof of his guilt, to be delivered up to the Goel for summary execution. Nor was the altar of God – a still more sacred place than the cities of refuge, and in ancient times almost universally regarded as an asylum for criminals – to be permitted in such cases to afford protection; from this also the murderer was to be dragged to his deserved doom. In short, deliberate murder was to admit of no compromise and no palliation: the original law, ‘whoso sheddest man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed,’ must be rigorously enforced; and, doubtless, mainly also on the original ground, ‘because in the image of God made He him.’

To disregard the sanctity of human life, and tread it vilely in the dust, was like aiming a thrust at God Himself, disparaging His noblest work in creation, and the one that stood in peculiar relationship to His own spiritual being. Therefore, the violation of the sixth command by deliberate murder involved also a kind of secondary violation of the first; and to suffer the blood of the innocent to lie unavenged, was, in the highest sense, to pollute the land; it was to render it unworthy of the name of God’s inheritance. ...

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Patrick Fairbairn on the sanctity of life and capital punishment for murder

It was made very clear, however, by other statutes on this subject, that when actual murder had been committed, no advantage was to accrue to the perpetrator from the cities of refuge; though he mi…

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