CHAP.26.--THAT IN CERTAIN PECULIAR CASES THE EXAMPLES OF THE SAINTSARE NOT TO BE
FOLLOWED.
But, they say, in the time of persecution some holy women escaped those who menaced them with outrage, by casting themselves into rivers which they knew would drown them; and having died in this manner, they are venerated in the church catholic as martyrs.Of such persons I do not presume to speak rashly.
I cannot tell whether there may not have been vouchsafed to the church some divine authority, proved by trustworthy evidences, for so honoring their memory: it may be that it is so.It may be they were not deceived by human judgment, but prompted by divine wisdom, to their act of self-destruction.
We know that this was the case with Samson.And when God enjoins any act, and intimates by plain evidence that He has enjoined it, who will call obedience criminal? Who will accuse so religious a submission? But then every man is not justified in sacrificing his son to God, because Abraham was commendable in so doing.
The soldier who has slain a man in obedience to the authority under which he is lawfully commissioned, is not accused of murder by any law of his state; nay, if he has not slain him, it is then he is accused of treason to the state, and of despising the law.But if he has been acting on his own authority, and at his own impulse, he has in this case incurred the crime of shedding human blood.And thus he is punished for doing without orders the very thing he is punished for neglecting to do when he has been ordered.If the commands of a general make so great a difference, shall the commands of God make none? He, then, who knows it is unlawful to kill himself, may nevertheless do so if he is ordered by Him whose commands we may not neglect.Only let him be very sure that the divine command has been signified.As for us, we can become privy to the secrets of conscience only in so far as these are disclosed to us, and so far only do we judge: "No one knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him."(1) But this we affirm, this we maintain, this we every way pronounce to be right, that no man ought to inflict on himself voluntary death, for this is to escape the ills of time by plunging into those of eternity; that no man ought to do so on account of another man's sins, for this were to escape a guilt which could not pollute him, by incurring great guilt of his own; that no man ought to do so on account of his own past sins, for he has all the more need of this life that these sins may be healed by repentance; that no man should put an end to this life to obtain that better life we look for after death, for those who die by their own hand have no better life after death.
CHAP.27.-- WHETHER VOLUNTARY DEATH SHOULD BE SOUGHT IN ORDER TO AVOIDSIN.
There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and which is thought a sound one,--namely, to prevent one's falling into sin either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain.If this reason were a good one, then we should be impelled to exhort men at once to destroy themselves, as soon as they have been washed in the laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin.Then is the time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out.And if this escape be lawfully secured by suicide, why not then specially? Why does any baptized person hold his hand from taking his own life? Why does any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself to them, when he has power so easily to rid himself of them all, and when it is written, "He who loveth danger shall fall into it?"(1) Why does he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which he may legitimately depart? But is any one so blinded and twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth, as to think that, though a man ought to make away with himself for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought yet to live, and so expose himself to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all those evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to numberless other miseries in which this life inevitably implicates us? What reason, then, is there for our consuming time in those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or vidual continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple and compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned?
If any one thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I say not he is foolish, but mad.With what face, then, can he say to any man, "Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add a heinous sin, while you live under an unchaste master, whose conduct is that of a barbarian?" How can he say this, if he cannot without wickedness say, "Kill yourself, now that you are washed from all your sins, lest you fall again into similar or even aggravated sins, while you live in a world which has such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to torment by its horrible cruelties, to overcome by its errors and terrors?" It is wicked to say this; it is therefore wicked to kill oneself.For if there could be any just cause of suicide, this were so.And since not even this is so, there is none.
CHAP.28.--BY WHAT JUDGMENT OF GOD THE ENEMY WAS PERMITTED TO INDULGEHIS LUST ON
THE BODIES OF CONTINENT CHRISTIANS.
Let not your life, then, be a burden to you, ye faithful servants of Christ, though your chastity was made the sport of your enemies.You have a grand and true consolation, if you maintain a good conscience, and know that you did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to commit sinful outrage upon you.