“Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.”

Source: The Tea Rose

in The Note Book, Kessinger Publishing (reprint 1998) ISBN 0766104168, 9780766104167
Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 12

XIX. Why sinners are not punished at once.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: It is not only spirits who punish the evil, the soul brings itself to judgment: and also it is not right for those who endure for ever to attain everything in a short time: and also, there is need of human virtue. If punishment followed instantly upon sin, men would act justly from fear and have no virtue.

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Commonwealth v. Kennedy, 170 Mass. 18, 20 (1897) (opinion of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts).
1890s

Canto I, line 189
Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)
Context: For his Religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit;
'Twas Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect, whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetick,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipp'd God for spite.
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for.
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow:
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin...

From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)
Context: If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.

Pt. 2, ch. 15
Introduction to the Devout Life (1609)

Original: Prima o poi verrà la fine della punizione, l'espiazione dei peccati; quindi vivi peccando e non fare il buono: non serve a un cazzo.
Source: prevale.net