The wrongness of seeking revenge is central to the story. Chillingworth’s crime, in covertly avenging himself against Dimmesdale, is worse than what the “guilty” couple have done. Of all the characters, Chillingworth is the least human and the most symbolic, representing either evil personified or simply an abstraction of the hostile forces mankind must contend with. But he is more immediately a microcosm of the Puritan community as a whole. Their punishment of Hester, in forcing her to wear the scarlet letter, is arguably an emblem of the ultimate sin of intolerance and lack of forgiveness. That all of this is done in the name of religion isn’t surprising to anyone familiar with history, perhaps so much so that Hawthorne does not even need to stress the irony of the most avowedly Christian of all societies carrying out such a condemnation. But the overall message is that vengeance, for any purpose, is at least as immoral as the wrong that is supposedly being avenged.