So, also, the Hebrew psalmist cries out, "Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults."[89] Unintentional error, as Mr. Montefiore observes, would be as liable to incur divine punishment as the most voluntary crime, if it infringed the tolerably wide province in which the right or sanctity of Yahveh was involved.[90] Whilst a deliberate moral iniquity was punished under the penal law, a sin committed "through ignorance, in the holy things of the Lord," required a sin- or trespass-offering for its expiation.[91] Speaking of the developed sacrificial system of the Jews, Professor Moore remarks, "The general rule in the Mishna is that any transgression the penalty of which, if wilful, would be that the offender be cut off, requires, if committed in ignorance or through inadvertence, a _[h.]a[t.][t.][=a]th_ [or sin-offering]; the catalogue of these transgressions ranges from incest and idolatry to eating the (internal) fat of animals and imitating the composition of the sacred incense, but does not include the commonest offences against morals."[92] The Rabbis also maintained that a false oath, even if made unconsciously, involves man in sin, and is punished as such.[93] {230} We meet with a similar opinion in mediæval Christianity. The principle laid down by St. Augustine,[94] and adopted by Canon Law,[95] that "ream linguam non facit, nisi mens rea," was not always acted upon. Various penitentials condemned to penance a person who, in giving evidence, swore to the best of his belief, in case his statement afterwards proved untrue.[96] In other cases, also, the Church prescribed penances for mere misfortunes. If a person killed another by pure accident, he had to do penance--in ordinary cases, according to most English penitentials, for one year,[97] according to various continental penitentials, for five[98] or seven[99] years; whereas, according to the Penitential of Pseudo-Theodore, he who accidentally killed his father or mother was to atone his deed with a penance of fifteen years,[100] and he who accidentally killed his son with a penance of twelve.[101] The Scotists even expressly declared that the external deed has a moral value of its own, which increases the goodness or badness of the agent's intention; and though this doctrine was opposed by Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Suarez, and other leading theologians, it was nevertheless admitted by them that, according to the will of God, certain external deeds entail a certain accidental reward, the so-called _aureola_.[102] In some cases the secular law, also, punishes misadventure on religious grounds. Thus the Salic law treated with great severity any person who accidentally put fire to a church, although it imposed no penalty on other cases of {231} unintentional incendiary;[103] and even to this day the Russian criminal law prescribes penitence for homicide by misadventure, "in order to quiet the conscience of the culprit."[104] According to the