In The Scarlet Letter there are three main sinners presented to the

reader. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth

are all written with their own forms of sin, and each has a unique
coping mechanism for their sins and guilt.

In the Puritan Theocracy, a sin, or a violation of law, was both a

religious and civil infraction.  All three characters commit a sin of
passion -- Dimmesdale and Hester in their illicit sexual liaison,
and Chillingworth in long term revenge.  Both Hester and
Dimmesdale pay dearly for their actions. has violated no law; quite
the contrary, he is seen a virtuous in his aiding Dimmesdale!  Thus
his revenge and hypocrisy remain disguised
Chilingworth sin is the most grievous sin in the novel, and the one
that goes unpunished.  But not quite -- having fully invested himself in
another's destruction,  there's nothing left of himself when
Dimmesdale dies; his life purpose has concluded. "Thou hast
escaped me!" he states, and he privately pays the price for those
actions by fading away and dying, but publicly, nothing is
acknowledged.

Suffering can be eased by many different ways. Reverend Arthur

Dimmesdale suffered greatly through his conscience and had nothing
to ease it. Dimmesdale had nothing to live for because he didn’t have
a family or someone that needed him. Dimmesdale, despairing of life,
told Chillingworth that “[he] could be well content, that [his] labors,
and [his] sorrows, and [his] sins, and [his] pains, should shortly end
with [him], and what is earthly of them be buried in [his] grave”(83).
His suffering is greater than his happiness, which leads him to believe
that death would rid his suffering. Dimmesdale had no one to help
him through his suffering while Hester had Pearl, which she loved
and was responsible to take care of. She could not leave Pearl alone,
binding her to life. Having to deal with suffering and guilt alone can
lead to terrible practices.
This sin and his suffering had taken over his life; he had nothing else.
Hester had one “treasure”, Pearl, while Dimmesdale had none,
leaving him alone in the world.
Hester's transformation of the scarlet letter's meaning raises one
of The Scarlet Letter's most important questions . Hester's defiant
response to her punishment and her attempts to rekindle her
romance with Dimmesdale and flee with him to Europe shows that
she never considered her affair with Dimmesdale to be a sin. The
narrator supports Hester's innocence and instead points the finger at
the novel's two real sinners: Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.
Chillingworth's sin was tormenting Dimmesdale almost to the point of
death; Dimmesdale's was abandoning Hester to lead a lonely life
without the man she loved.