5. God by the delay of punishment gives man the example of forbearance, and rebukes his yielding to the first impulses of anger and of a vindictive temper.
6. God has reference, in the delay of punishment, to the possible reformation of the guilty, and to the services which, when reformed, they may render to their country or their race. Instances cited.
7. The wicked often have their punishment postponed till after they have rendered some important service
in which they are essential agents, and sometimes that, before their own punishment, they may serve as executioners for other guilty persons or communities.
8. There is frequently a peculiar timeliness and appropriateness in delayed punishment.
9. Punishment is delayed only in appearance, but commences when the guilt is incurred, so that it seems slow because it is long.
10. Instances of punishment in visions, apprehensions, and inward wretchedness, while there was no outward infliction of penalty.
11. There is really no need that punishment be inflicted; guilt is in the consciousness of the guilty its own adequate punishment.
12. Objection is made by one of the interlocutors to the justice of punishing children or posterity for the guilt of fathers or ancestors, and he heaps up an incongruous collection of cases in which he mingles confusedly the action of the Divine Providence and that of human caprice or malignity.
13. In answer to the objection, Plutarch first adduces as a precisely parallel order of things, with which no one finds fault, that by which children or posterity derive enduring benefit and honor from a parent’s or ancestor’s virtues and services.