Cursed [be] he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.
Ver. 25. Cursed be he that taketh reward.] Among the Romans, by the law of the twelve tables, it was death without any deliverance. The psalmist doometh this sin with exclusion out of heaven. Psa 15:5 That king of this land that was called St Edmund, was wont oft to say, There is not much difference betwixt those two words, prendere and pendere, to take gifts and to hang, and that the latter was the desert of the former. A bribing judge wants but a hurdle, a horse, and a halter, to do him right; as Belknap once said in another case.