who with their own hand wrought death for themselves, guiltless, and loathing the light cast away their souls; for whom, though they long to return to the world above, the divine law stands in the way, and the dismal swamp of the loathsome flood binds them fast. Or is she perhaps not there for this reason, that she slew herself not as innocent, but conscious of evil within herself? For what if (a thing she alone could know) she, though the youth rushed upon her by violence, was herself also enticed by her own desire and consented, and, punishing this in herself, so grieved that she thought it must be expiated by death? And yet not even thus ought she to have killed herself, if she could have performed a fruitful repentance before the false gods.
Nevertheless, if perchance it is thus, and that saying is false—that there were two and only one committed adultery—but rather both committed adultery, the one by manifest invasion, the other by hidden consent, then she did not slay herself innocent, and therefore it can be said by her literary defenders that she is not among those in the underworld who 「with their own hand wrought death for themselves, guiltless.」 But this case is so pressed on both sides that, if the homicide is extenuated, the adultery is confirmed; if the adultery is purged away, the homicide is heaped up; nor is any way out found at all, when it is asked: If she was an adulteress, why is she praised;
if she was chaste, why was she slain? Yet for us, in order to refute these men who insult Christian women violated in captivity, men estranged from every thought of holiness, this noble woman's example suffices, in that it was said amid her illustrious praises: 「There were two, yet only one committed adultery.」 For Lucretia was the more believed by them to be one who could not stain herself by any consent to adultery. That she therefore killed herself—herself, not an adulteress—because she had endured an adulterer, is not love of chastity but weakness of shame.
For she was ashamed of another's foulness committed against her, even though not with her, and, being a Roman woman too greedy of praise, she feared lest it be thought that, what she had suffered by violence while she lived, she had suffered willingly if she lived on. Therefore she thought that punishment must be brought before the eyes of men as a witness of her mind, since she could not display her conscience to them. For she blushed to be believed an accomplice in the deed, if she should patiently bear what another had foully done in her. Christian women did not do this, who, having suffered similar things, yet live and did not avenge upon themselves another's crime, lest they should add their own to the crimes of others—if, because the enemy by lusting had committed defilements upon them, they should out of shame commit homicides upon themselves.
For they have within them the glory of chastity, the testimony of conscience; and they have it before the eyes of their God, and they seek no more, where they have nothing further that they may rightly do, lest they swerve from the authority of the divine law while they wrongly avoid the offense of human suspicion. CHAPTER XX. That there is no authority which grants to Christians, in any cause whatever, the right of voluntary death. For not in vain can it be found that nowhere in the holy canonical books has it been divinely commanded or permitted to us that, for the sake either of attaining immortality itself or of avoiding or escaping any evil, we should inflict death upon ourselves. For we are to understand that we are forbidden this also where the law says: Thou shalt not kill—especially since it did not add:
「thy neighbor」, as when it forbade false witness it said: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Nor, however, should anyone, if he bear false witness against himself, think himself free of this crime, because the lover received from himself the rule of loving his neighbor, since indeed it is written: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Moreover, if one who confesses what is false about himself is no less guilty of false witness than if he did this against his neighbor—since in that precept by which false witness is forbidden, it is forbidden against one's neighbor, and it could seem to those not rightly understanding that it is not forbidden for anyone to stand as a false witness against himself—
how much more is it to be understood that it is not lawful for a man to kill himself, since in that which is written, Thou shalt not kill, with nothing thereafter added, no one—not even the very one to whom the command is given—is to be understood as excepted! Hence some try to extend this precept even to beasts and cattle, so that on this account it should not be lawful to kill any of them either. Why then not also herbs and whatever is nourished and fixed in the soil by its roots? For this kind of thing too, although it does not feel, is said to live, and through this can also die, and accordingly, when force is applied, can be killed. Hence the Apostle too, when he was speaking of seeds of this sort, says: Thou, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and in the Psalm it is written: He killed their vines with hail.
Shall we then, on this account, when we hear 「Thou shalt not kill」, count it a sin to pluck a shrub, and most madly acquiesce in the error of the Manichaeans? With these ravings, then, set aside, when we read 「Thou shalt not kill」, if we do not take this saying to be about bushes, because they have no sensation, nor about irrational animals—flying, swimming, walking, creeping—because they are associated with us by no reason, which has not been given them to share in common with us (whence by the most just ordinance of the Creator both their life and death are subjected to our uses): it remains that we understand it to have been said about man, 「Thou shalt not kill」—therefore neither another nor thyself. For indeed he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man. CHAPTER XXI.
On the killings of men that are excepted from the crime of homicide. But certain exceptions that same divine authority itself has made, so that a man may not be killed. But with these excepted, whom God commands to be killed, whether by a law given or by an express command for a time addressed to a particular person (yet he himself does not kill who owes his service to the one commanding, as a sword is an aid to the one using it; and therefore they in no way acted against this precept by which it was said, Thou shalt not kill, who waged wars with God as their author, or who, bearing the person of public power, punished criminals with death according to its laws, that is, according to the command of most just reason);
and Abraham was not only not blamed for the crime of cruelty, but was even praised under the name of piety, because he was willing to kill his son not wickedly but obediently; and it is rightly asked whether it is to be reckoned as done by God's command, that Jephthah killed his daughter, who met her father, since he had vowed that he would sacrifice to God whatever should first meet him as he returned victorious from battle;
nor is Samson otherwise excused, that he crushed himself together with his enemies by the ruin of the house, except that the Spirit, which through him worked miracles, had secretly commanded this)—with these, then, excepted, whom either a just law generally, or God the very fountain of justice specially, commands to be killed, whoever kills a man—whether himself, or anyone at all—is entangled in the crime of homicide. CHAPTER XXII. Whether voluntary death can ever pertain to greatness of soul. And whoever have perpetrated this upon themselves are perhaps to be wondered at for greatness of soul, but not to be praised for soundness of wisdom.
And yet, if you consult reason more carefully, not even that greatness of soul itself will rightly be so named, where anyone, through inability to bear either harsh things or others' sins, has slain himself. For a feeble mind is rather detected, which cannot bear either the hard servitude of its own body or the foolish opinion of the crowd; and that soul is deservedly to be called greater, which can bear a life of toil rather than flee it, and which, in the light and purity of conscience, despises human judgment—and especially the judgment of the common crowd, which is for the most part wrapped in the darkness of error.
Wherefore, if it is to be thought done with greatness of soul when a man inflicts death upon himself, then rather is that Cleombrotus found to possess this greatness of soul, who, they say, having read the book of Plato in which he discoursed on the immortality of the soul, threw himself headlong from a wall and so departed from this life to that which he believed to be better. For nothing pressed him, neither calamity nor crime, true or false, that he should take himself off through inability to bear it; but greatness of soul alone was present for seizing death and breaking the sweet bonds of this life.
Yet that this was done greatly rather than well, Plato himself, whom he had read, could be a witness to him; for surely he would above all and most especially have done it, or even have prescribed it, had he not, by that mind with which he beheld the immortality of the soul, judged that it must by no means be done—nay rather, that it must be forbidden. But, you say, many slew themselves lest they should fall into the hands of enemies. We do not merely ask whether it was done, but whether it ought to have been done. For sound reason is to be preferred even to examples; and indeed examples too accord with it—but those which are so much the more worthy of imitation as they are the more excellent in piety.
The patriarchs did not do it, the prophets did not, the apostles did not; for the Lord Christ himself, when he admonished them, if they should suffer persecution, to flee from city to city, could have admonished them to lay hands upon themselves, lest they fall into the hands of their persecutors. But if he neither commanded nor advised that they should depart from this life in that manner—they for whose departure he promised to prepare eternal mansions—then whatever examples the nations who know not God may set forth, it is manifest that this is not lawful for those who worship the one true God. CHAPTER XXIII. What sort of example is that of Cato, who, unable to bear the victory of Caesar, slew himself.
But even they, besides Lucretia—about whom we have said above [enough of] what seemed fit—do not easily find anyone on whose authority they may rely, except that Cato who killed himself at Utica; not because he alone did it, but because he was held to be a learned and upright man, so that it is deservedly thought that what he did could even rightly be done, or could be done. Of his deed, what should I best say, except that certain of his friends, learned men too, who more prudently dissuaded this from being done, judged it to be the deed of a weaker rather than a stronger soul, by which was shown not honor guarding against base things, but weakness not enduring adversities? This Cato himself judged also in the case of his most beloved son.
For if it was base to live under Caesar's victory, why was he the author of this baseness to his son, whom he charged to hope all things from Caesar's kindness? Why did he not force him too to die along with himself? For if Torquatus laudably slew his son, who had fought against the enemy contrary to command, even though victorious, why did the vanquished Cato spare his vanquished son, when he did not spare himself? Was it more base to be a victor against command than to bear a victor against honor? By no means, then, did Cato judge it base to live under the victor Caesar; otherwise he would have freed his son from this baseness by his paternal sword.
What then is it, except that as much as he loved his son, for whom he both hoped and willed that Caesar should spare him, so much did he envy Caesar's own glory—lest by him he too should be spared (as Caesar himself is reported to have said)—or, to put it somewhat more mildly, he blushed? CHAPTER XXIV. That in the very virtue by which Regulus was more excellent than Cato, Christians shine forth far more.
But these men, against whom we are arguing, do not wish that we should prefer to Cato the holy man Job, who chose rather to endure such horrible evils in his own flesh than, by death inflicted on himself, to be rid of all torments, or other holy men from our writings—writings of the loftiest authority and most worthy of faith—who chose rather to bear the captivity and domination of enemies than to inflict death upon themselves; but from their own writings I will prefer to that same M. Cato none other than Regulus. For Cato had never conquered Caesar, to whom, being conquered, he disdained to be subjected, and, lest he be subjected, chose to be slain by his own hand; but Regulus had already conquered the Carthaginians, and as a Roman commander had carried back to the Roman empire a victory not to be lamented from fellow citizens, but to be praised over enemies;
yet afterward, conquered by them, he chose rather to bear them by serving than to take himself away from them by dying. Accordingly he preserved both patience under the domination of the Carthaginians and constancy in his love for the Romans, neither withdrawing his conquered body from the enemies nor his unconquered soul from his fellow citizens. And that he was unwilling to kill himself, he did not do from love of this life. He proved this when, for the sake of his promise and his oath, he returned without any hesitation to those same enemies whom he had offended more grievously by words in the senate than by arms in war. Therefore so great a despiser of this life, when he chose rather to end it through whatever punishments at the hands of raging enemies than to destroy himself, beyond doubt judged that it is a great crime if a man should destroy himself.
Among all their praiseworthy men, illustrious for the marks of virtue, the Romans put forward none better, whom neither prosperity had corrupted—for in so great a victory he remained most poor—nor adversity had broken—for to such destructions he returned undaunted. Moreover, if the most valiant and most renowned men, defenders of an earthly fatherland and worshippers—of gods, though false, yet not themselves deceitful, but most truthful even as swearers of oaths—who could strike down conquered enemies by the custom and law of war, these, when conquered by enemies, were unwilling to strike themselves down, and, though they feared death not at all, yet chose rather to bear their conquering masters than to inflict it upon themselves:
how much more shall Christians, who worship the true God and sigh after the heavenly fatherland, refrain from this deed, if the divine arrangement has for a time subjected them, to be either proved or amended, to enemies—those whom in that humiliation he does not forsake, who for their sake came so humbly, though the Most High—especially those whom the laws of no military power, or of such warfare, constrain to strike even a conquered enemy. What error, then, so evil creeps in, that a man should kill himself, either because he has sinned against him, or lest an enemy sin against him, when he dares not kill that enemy himself, whether the one who has sinned or the one about to sin? CHAPTER XXV. That sin ought not to be avoided by means of sin.
But, they say, it is to be feared and guarded against, lest the body subjected to lust, by its most enticing pleasure, allure the soul to consent to sin. Accordingly, they say, not now on account of another's sin, but on account of one's own, before anyone commits this, he ought to kill himself. By no means indeed will the soul do this—that it consent to the lust of its own flesh, stirred up by another's lust—the soul that is subject rather to God and his wisdom than to the body and its concupiscence. Yet if it is a detestable deed and a damnable crime even for a man to kill himself, as manifest truth proclaims, who would be so senseless as to say: 「Let us now perpetrate homicide, lest afterward perhaps we fall into adultery」?
Is it not, if iniquity so prevails that not innocence but rather sins are to be chosen, better to have an uncertain adultery in the future than a certain homicide in the present? Is it not better to commit a disgrace that may be healed by repentance than such a crime where no room is left for wholesome repentance? These things I have said on account of those, men or women, who think that violence, by which they may die, is to be inflicted on themselves—not for the sake of avoiding another's sin, but their own—lest, being themselves perhaps aroused under another's lust, they consent to their own. But far be it from a Christian mind, which trusts in its God and, with hope placed in him, leans upon his help—far be it, I say, that such a mind should yield to any pleasures of the flesh whatever, so as to consent to baseness.
But if that concupiscent disobedience, which still dwells in our dying members, is moved against the law of our will as it were by a law of its own, how much more is it without fault in the body of one not consenting, if it is without fault in the body of one sleeping! CHAPTER XXVI. Concerning those things which it is not lawful to do, when they are known to have been done by the saints, by what reasoning they are to be believed to have been done. But, they say, certain holy women in time of persecution, in order to escape those who pursued their chastity, threw themselves into a river that would seize and slay them, and in that manner perished, and their martyrdoms are celebrated with most renowned veneration in the Catholic Church. Of these I dare judge nothing rashly.
For whether the divine authority persuaded the Church by certain trustworthy testimonies thus to honor their memory, I know not; and it may be that it is so. For what if they did this, not deceived by human counsel, but commanded by God, and not erring, but obeying?—as concerning Samson it is not lawful for us to believe otherwise. But when God commands and intimates that he commands without any ambiguities, who would call obedience into the reckoning of crime? Who would accuse the dutifulness of piety? But not for that reason does anyone act without crime, whoever has resolved to sacrifice his son to God, because Abraham did this even laudably. For a soldier too, when, obedient to authority under which he is lawfully placed, he kills a man, by no
law of his own city is he guilty of homicide; nay rather, unless he does it, he is guilty of deserting and despising the command; but if he had done it of his own accord and on his own authority, he would have incurred the crime of shedding human blood. And so, from the same source whence he is punished if he does it uncommanded, thence he will be punished if he does not do it when commanded. But if this is so when the emperor commands, how much more when the Creator commands! Whoever, then, hears that it is not lawful for him to kill himself, let him do it, if he has commanded whose commands it is not lawful to despise; only let him see whether the divine command wavers with no uncertainty. We approach the conscience by the ear; we do not usurp to ourselves the judgment of hidden things. No one knows what is done in a man except the spirit of man which is in him.
This we say, this we assert, this we approve in every way: that no one ought to inflict voluntary death upon himself as if to flee temporal troubles, lest he fall into eternal ones; nor on account of another's sins, lest he himself begin to have as his own most grievous sin that which another's did not pollute him with; nor on account of his own past sins, on account of which this life is the more needed, that they may be healed by repentance; nor as if from desire of a better life, which is hoped for after death, because a better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death. CHAPTER XXVII. Whether voluntary death is to be sought for the sake of avoiding sin.
There remains one cause, of which I had begun to speak, by which it is thought useful that anyone should kill himself, namely, lest he rush into sin either through alluring pleasure or through raging pain. If we should be willing to admit this cause, it will go so far as to reach the point that men are to be exhorted then rather to slay themselves, when, washed in the laver of holy regeneration, they have received remission of all their sins. For then is the time for guarding against all future sins, when all past ones are blotted out. But if this is rightly done by voluntary death, why is it not done then most of all? Why does each one baptized spare himself?
Why does he again thrust his liberated head into so many perils of this life, when it is in his most easy power, by death inflicted upon himself, to avoid them all, and when it is written: He that loveth danger shall fall into it? Why, then, are so many and so great perils loved—or at least, even if they are not loved, why are they undertaken—while he remains in this life, from which it is permitted to depart? Or does so insipid a perversity overturn the heart and turn it away from the consideration of truth, that, if anyone ought to kill himself lest he fall into sin under the domination of a single captor, he should think he must live so as to endure this very world, full at every hour of temptations—both such as are feared under one master, and innumerable others, without which this life is not led?
What reason, then, is there why we should spend our time in those exhortations by which, in addressing the baptized, we strive to kindle them either to virginal integrity, or to widowed continence, or to the very fidelity of the marriage bed, when we have better and easier short-cuts, removed from all perils of sinning—namely, that whomever, after the most recent remission of sins, we could persuade to seize death and inflict it upon themselves, we should send them to the Lord sounder and purer? Moreover, if whoever thinks this is to be undertaken and urged is—I will not say foolish, but—mad: with what face, pray, does he say to a man:
「Kill thyself, lest to thy small sins thou add a graver one while thou livest under a master of barbarous and unchaste manners」—he who cannot but most wickedly say: 「Kill thyself, now that all thy sins are absolved, lest thou again commit such things or even worse, while thou livest too long in a world enticing with so many impure pleasures, raging with so many unspeakable cruelties, hostile with so many errors and terrors」? Since it is wicked to say this, it is assuredly wicked to kill oneself. For if any just cause for doing this of one's own accord could exist, beyond doubt there would be none more just than this. But since not even this is just, therefore there is none. CHAPTER XXVIII. By what judgment of God hostile lust was permitted to sin against the bodies of the continent.
Therefore let not your life, O ye faithful of Christ, be a weariness to you, if your chastity has been a mockery to enemies. You have a great and true consolation, if you retain a faithful conscience that you did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to sin against you. But if perhaps you ask why they were permitted, deep indeed is the providence of the Creator and Ruler of the world, and unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past tracing out; yet nevertheless question your souls faithfully, lest perhaps over this good of integrity and continence or chastity you exalted yourselves too proudly, and, delighting in human praises, you even envied others in this respect.
I do not accuse what I do not know, nor do I hear what your hearts, when questioned, answer to you. Yet if they have answered that it is so, do not wonder that you have lost that whereby you were eager to please men, and that there has remained to you that which cannot be displayed to men. If you did not consent to the sinners, divine help came to divine grace, that it might not be lost; human reproach succeeded human glory, that it might not be loved. In both be consoled, O ye fainthearted—on the one hand proved, on the other chastened; on the one hand justified, on the other amended.
But as for those whose hearts, when questioned, answer that they never were proud over the good of virginity, or of widowhood, or of conjugal chastity, but, consenting to the humble, exulted with trembling over God's gift, and envied no one the equal excellence of holiness and chastity, but, setting aside human praise (which is wont to be paid the more abundantly, the rarer the good is that demands praise), wished rather that a greater number of them might exist than that they themselves should stand out the more in their fewness: let not even these, such as they are, if any of them too was violated by barbarian lust, complain that this was permitted, nor on that account believe that God neglects these things, because he permits what no one commits with impunity.
For certain burdens, as it were, of evil desires are both relaxed through the hidden present divine judgment, and reserved for the manifest last one. But perhaps those women, who are well aware to themselves that they did not exalt their heart, puffed up over this good of chastity, and yet suffered hostile violence in the flesh, had something of latent infirmity, which might have been raised up into the pride of arrogance, had they escaped this humiliation in that devastation. Just as, therefore, some were snatched away by death, lest wickedness should alter their understanding, so something was snatched from these women by violence, lest prosperity should alter their modesty.
From both groups, therefore — from those who were already growing proud over their flesh because it had endured no shameful contact, or who perhaps might have grown proud had it not been violated by the enemy's force — chastity was not taken away, but humility was instilled. The swelling pride of the first was relieved before it overflowed; the threatening pride of the second was met before it advanced. And yet this too must not be passed over in silence: to certain women who suffered these outrages it might have seemed that the good of continence is to be counted among bodily goods, and that it then remains only if the body is touched by no one's lust — as though it did not rest in the strength of a will divinely aided, so that both body and spirit may be holy, and as though it were the kind of good that can be taken away against the mind's consent.
And perhaps this error has been removed from them. For when they consider with what conscience they served God, and with unshaken faith do not believe of Him that He could in any way forsake those who so serve Him and call upon Him, and cannot doubt how greatly chastity pleases Him, they see it to follow that He would by no means have permitted these things to befall His holy ones, if in such a way the holiness could perish which He bestowed upon them and loves in them. CHAPTER 29. What the family of Christ ought to answer to unbelievers when they reproach it, saying that Christ did not deliver it from the fury of the enemy.
The whole family of the most high and true God therefore has its own consolation — a consolation not deceptive, nor founded on the hope of tottering or fleeting things — and a temporal life itself in no way to be regretted, in which it is schooled for the eternal life; it uses earthly goods as a pilgrim and is not captivated by them, while by evils it is either tested or amended. But those who insult its uprightness and say to it, when perchance it has fallen into some temporal evils, 'Where is your God?' — let them themselves say where their gods are when they suffer the like, for the avoiding of which they either worship them or contend that they ought to be worshipped. For our family answers thus: My God is everywhere present, everywhere wholly, nowhere enclosed; He can be present unseen, and absent without moving;