"pardoning a fornicator is worse than pardoning a murderer"

Ha!  Fie, these filthy vices!  It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid.  'Tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one.

Angelo, in Shakespeare's Measure for measure II.4, ll.41-48, as interpreted by Frank Kermode in Shakespeare's language (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000), 160 ff., as filtered through Charles Rosen, "The revelations of Frank Kermode," The New York review of books 58, no. 10 (June 9, 2011):  36 (34-36).