At first blush it seems that James has Draconian severity in these verses, but it is not the severe punishment of small crimes or venial offenses. The long list of capital crimes in ancient England shows how slowly men have learned to temper justice with mercy. Some of the Stoics said that the theft of a penny was as bad as parricide. The “blue laws” of Connecticut come to mind also. James does not say that all sins are equal, that one sin is as bad as another. As a matter of fact, each man discounts his own sins. The rake looks with scorn on the grafter. The man guilty of spiritual pride scouts the drunkard. It is a hard task to convince a man that he is guilty of his own sin. The burden of the law was very heavy. The curse of the law (Gal. 3:13) was more than violation of particular precepts, though that was true to the last detail (Deut. 11:26, 28, 32; 27:26), as Jesus explained (Matt. 5:18 f.). The Jewish fathers put a hedge or fence about the law (_Pirke Aboth_ i. 1) and made it very difficult to keep all of it (the law as a whole, hard enough as it was), plus the traditions of the elders, which often contradicted and set at naught the commandment of God (Mark 7:8 f.). Compare Sirach 27:12. Rabbi Hunnah, in a midrash on Numbers 5:14, taught that he who committed adultery broke all commandments, and some of the rabbis placed the sabbath above all else and held that if one profaned it, he had broken all the commandments. Mayor, per contra, quotes some of the rabbis as saying that to keep the law about fringes and phylacteries was to keep the whole law. There was a constant tendency to make the ceremonial cover up moral and spiritual lapses. Augustine (Epistle to Jerome, 167) compares this teaching of James with the Stoic doctrine of the solidarity of virtues and vices as mentioned. But certainly James has a higher view than these hair-splitting punctilios. Paul saw that the essence of sin lies in the motive (Rom. 14:23) and that desire to glorify God should pervade all our acts (1 Cor. 10:31). It seems hard to hold someone who makes one slip to strict account and hold him guilty of all. That is true only in the sense that James proceeds to explain that any violation of law makes one a lawbreaker.[69] One does not have to break all the laws to become a lawbreaker. One offense places him in that category. The matter is put with this sharp emphasis because of the complacent self-satisfaction of the perfunctory ceremonialist (James 1:26), who may yet commit the sin of partiality in church. James is seeking to convict such “pious” sinners of their guilt, to rouse them out of their smug self-satisfaction.