“Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you.… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.”

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 11, Karma

First Week, First Day.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

La clémence vaut mieux que la justice.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 174.

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Book III, Ch. 10
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

Holt's Case (1793), 22 How. St. Tr. 1237.

Hart's Hope (1983)

A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)
Context: The church regarded epidemics as the messengers of the good God. The “Black Death” was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some and whose justice murdered the rest. To stop the scourge, they tried to soften the heart of God by kneelings and prostrations—by processions and prayers—by burning incense and by making vows. They did not try to remove the cause. The cause was God. They did not ask for pure water, but for holy water. Faith and filth lived or rather died together. Religion and rags, piety and pollution kept company. Sanctity kept its odor.