Seventy times seven and the unforgiving servant
The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven.
The unmistakable reference is Matthew 18:21–22: Peter asks how often he must forgive a brother, and Jesus answers, in the King James Version (first published 1611), ‘Until seventy times seven.’ Chesterton transfers the instruction from an offending brother to the more general category of the criminal. The following parable supplies an important qualification: a servant whose enormous debt has been cancelled refuses a fellow servant mercy, and is himself condemned (18:23–35). Forgiveness therefore does not mean that cruelty ceases to be wrong; the story makes the obligation to forgive itself a matter of severe judgment. Chesterton's division between person and deed is an interpretation of this moral structure, rather than a second sentence quoted from Jesus. Matthew 18:21–35, KJV.
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