“As I perceive, however,” added Mr. Coke, “that the abstract of the arguments in this important case runs to about five hundred pages, I shall therefore recapitulate Judge Nodwell’s charge, which has been considered a very brilliant specimen of legal acumen and judicial eloquence.

“‘This, gentlemen of the jury,’ said his lordship,’ is a case of apparently some difficulty, and I cannot help admiring the singular talent and high principles displayed by the learned counsel on both sides, who so ably argued it.  Of one thing I am certain, that no consciousness of religious ignorance, no privation of religious knowledge, could ever induce my learned friend Sleek to commit such a theft.  Rather than do so, I am sure he would be conscientious enough to pass through the world without any religion at all.  As it is, we all know that he is a great light in that respect—­’

“‘He would be a burning light, too, my lord,’ observed Rant.

“No; his reverence for the Bible is too great, too sincere to profane it by such vulgar perusal as it may have received at the hands of that destitute old woman, who probably thumbed it day and night, without regard either to dog-ears or binding, or a consideration of how she was treating the property of the parish.  The fact, however, gentlemen, seems to be, that the old woman either altogether forgot the institutions of society, or resolved society itself in her own mind into first principles.  Now, gentlemen, we cannot go behind first principles, neither can we go behind the old woman.  We must keep her before us, but it is not necessary to keep the Bible so.  It has been found, indeed, that she did not sell, pledge, bestow, or otherwise make the book subservient to her temporal or corporal wants, as Mr. Rant very ingeniously argued.  Neither did she take it to place in her library—­for she had no library; nor for ostentation in her hall—­for she had no hall, as my pious friend Counsellor Sleek has.  But, gentlemen, even if this old woman by reading the Bible learned to repent, and felt conversion of heart, you are not to infer that the act which brought her to grace and repentance may not have been a hardened violation of the law.  Beware of this error, gentlemen.  The old woman by stealing this Bible may have repented her of her sins, it is true; but it is your business, gentlemen, to make her repent of the law also.  The law is as great a source of repentance as the Bible any day, and, I am proud to say, has caused more human tears to be shed, and bitterer ones, too, than the Word of God ever did.  Even although justified in the sight of heaven, it does not follow that this woman is to escape here.  It is the act, and not the heart, that the law deals with.  The purity of her motives, her repentance, are nothing to the law; but the law is everything to the person in whom they operate; because, although the heart may be innocent, the individual person must be punished.  A penitent heart, or a consciousness of the pardon of God, are not fit considerations for a jury-box.  You are, therefore, to exclude the motive, and to take nothing into consideration but the act; for it is only that by which the law has been violated.