* eye for eye, &c.] The execution of this law belonged not to private persons, but onely to the Magistrate; which yet was not alwaies to be observed with rigour, but these particulars are set downe to shew, that the punishment must be limited to a due proportion: as that an eye should not be required, in recompence of wrong in a tooth: or any member of more, for that which is of lesser use or worth: and this must be taken not by an Arithmeticall, but by a Geometricall correspondence; for if he that had but one eye, had put out one of the eyes of him that had two, if the recompence were numericall one for one, it were not equall; for then one man might lose a sense, the other but an eye, which is but the organ of seeing, without which he might see while the other remaineth; therefore the retaliation more agreeable to justice (in such a a case) was not an eye for an eye, but two for one, that is, blindnesse for blindnesse. Leviticus 24:20. Deuteronomy 19:21. Matthew 5:38.