Augustine of Hippo : If there is an altercation between two men, that they come to trial and judge and agree with the righteous. It is assumed that judges are the ones who must judge, not those who are said to have had the altercation. Then he goes on: And they will take it away from the wicked, and it will come to pass that, if he is worthy of stripes, who has done wrong, you will put him before the judges and scourge him according to his impiety. He will be flogged with forty lashes, no more. But if they continue to whip you with many more lashes, your brother will be debased before you. You have to pay attention. Although the Scripture has commanded to punish with scouring the sins that do not deserve to be punished with the death penalty and with so few, nevertheless the one who is scourged called him impious or worker of impiety, so that we know that the Scriptures do not speak as they do Many. We read the Scriptures with little attention, if we think that adultery is not an impiety, because it seems that whoever has committed it has sinned against man, while the law orders that sin be punished with the death penalty (Cf Deuteronomy 22,22) and we say that impiety they are more serious than these sins, because some of them belong to those who are punished with only forty lashes. So, there is a slight impiety worthy of the scourge, and there is another serious impiety that deserves the death penalty. In the same way, the sins that seem to be directed, not against God, but against man, some are worthy of the death penalty, and others, of a correction, which can be by whipping or by an easier forgiveness. It is evident that the Seventy have said the same thing, since they, too, have called impiety the sin of him who is worthy of the punishment of flogging. — QUESTIONS ON DEUTERONOMY, Q. 45 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)