It is said in the Lord's Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Feeling you are owed, feeling debts, stops everything.... If you are going to make everyone apologise and make amends and eat the dust, then you will be under the exacting law that Christ warns you to escape from. You will put yourself in prison—that is, under unnecessary laws—and you will not get out until you have paid on your side for all your own faults. But there is a law of mercy—that is, an influence higher than the literal law of an eye for an eye, which is the law of the man of violence. This is an example of “putting yourself under new influences.”
Maurice Nicoll