For she was ashamed of another's foulness committed upon her, even though not with her; and, being a Roman woman too greedy of praise, she feared lest she should be thought, if she lived, to have willingly endured what she had suffered by violence while she lived. Whence she thought that penalty must be applied before the eyes of men as a witness of her mind, to whom she could not demonstrate her conscience. For she blushed to be believed an accomplice of the deed, if she should bear patiently what another had foully done in her. Christian women did not do this: they, having suffered similar things, yet live, nor have they avenged upon themselves another's crime, lest they should add their own to others' wickedness, if, because enemies had committed rapes upon them in lusting, they should commit murders upon themselves in blushing.
For they have within the glory of chastity, the testimony of conscience; and they have it before the eyes of their God, and they seek nothing more, where there is nothing more that they can rightly do, lest they turn aside from the authority of the divine law while they wrongly seek to avoid the offense of human suspicion. For it can nowhere be found that in the holy canonical books it has been divinely commanded or permitted to us that we should inflict death upon ourselves, either for the sake of attaining immortality itself or for the sake of avoiding or escaping any evil. For we must understand that we are forbidden, where the law says: You shall not kill — especially since it did not add "your neighbor," as when it forbade false witness:
"You shall not," it says, "bear false witness against your neighbor." Nor yet on that account, if anyone should bear false witness against himself, should he think himself free from this crime, since the lover has received the rule of loving his neighbor from himself, seeing that it is written: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Moreover, if he is no less guilty of false witness who bears false witness about himself than if he did this against his neighbor — although in that precept by which false witness is forbidden, it is forbidden against one's neighbor, and it might seem to those who do not understand rightly 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, You shall not kill, with nothing thereafter added, no one — not even, assuredly, he to whom the command is given — is to be understood as excepted! Whence some try to extend this precept even to beasts and cattle, so that from this it should be lawful to kill none of them either. Why not, then, also plants, and whatever is nourished and rooted in the soil? For this kind of thing too, although it does not feel, is said to live, and thereby can also die, and consequently, when force is applied, be killed. Whence the apostle also, when he was speaking of seeds of this sort: You, he says, what you sow is not made alive unless it die; and in the psalm it is written: He killed their vines with hail.
Shall we then, on this account, when we hear "You shall not kill," reckon it a sin to pull up a shrub, and most insanely acquiesce in the error of the Manichaeans? These deliriums, therefore, being set aside, when we read "You shall not kill," if we do not take this to have been said of shrubs, because they have no sense, nor of the irrational animals — flying, swimming, walking, creeping — because they are associated with us by no reason, which it was not given to them to have in common with us (whence, by the most just ordinance of the Creator, both their life and their death are subjected to our uses): it remains that we should understand of man what was said, You shall not kill — therefore neither another nor yourself. For he who kills himself kills nothing other than a man.
But that same divine authority made certain exceptions to the rule that it is not lawful for a man to be killed. But these being excepted whom God commands to be killed, either by a law given or by an express command directed to a particular person for a particular occasion — (for he does not himself kill who owes his ministry to the one commanding, as a sword is an aid to the one using it; and therefore they by no means acted against this precept by which it was said, You shall not kill, who, with God as their author, have waged wars, or who, bearing the person of the public power, according to His laws — that is, the command of most just reason — have punished the wicked with death; and Abraham was not only not blamed for the crime of cruelty, but was even praised in the name of piety, because he was willing to kill his son not wickedly but obediently;)
and it is deservedly asked whether it is to be held as done by God's command that Jephthah killed his daughter, who met her father, since he had vowed to sacrifice to God whatever should first meet him on his return victorious from battle; nor is Samson otherwise excused, that he crushed himself together with his enemies in the ruin of the house, except that the Spirit had secretly commanded this, the Spirit who was working miracles through him) — these, therefore, being excepted, whom either a just law generally, or God Himself, the very fountain of justice, specially commands to be killed, whoever kills a man, whether himself or any other, is entangled in the crime of murder. And whoever have perpetrated this upon themselves are perhaps to be admired for greatness of soul, but not to be praised for soundness of wisdom.
Although, if you consult reason more diligently, not even that will rightly be named greatness of soul, where anyone, from an inability to endure either any hardships or another's sins, has destroyed himself. For a mind is rather detected as weak which cannot bear either the harsh servitude of its own body or the foolish opinion of the crowd; and that is deservedly to be called the greater soul which can rather bear a life full of misery than flee from it, and which, in the light and purity of its conscience, despises human judgment, and most of all the vulgar judgment, which is for the most part wrapped in the fog of error.
Wherefore, if it must be reckoned as done with greatness of soul when a man inflicts death upon himself, then that Theombrotus is rather to be found endowed with this greatness of soul, who, they say, having read a book of Plato in which he discoursed on the immortality of the soul, cast himself headlong from a wall, and thus departed from this life to that which he believed to be better. For nothing pressed upon him, either of calamity or of guilt, whether true or false, that, being unable to bear it, he should take himself away; but only greatness of soul was present to seize death and to break the sweet bonds of this life.
Yet that this was done with greatness rather than with goodness, Plato himself, whom he had read, could have been his witness — Plato who assuredly would have done this chiefly and above all, or even have commanded it, had he not, by that same mind with which he saw the immortality of the soul, judged that it must by no means be done, nay rather must be forbidden. But, they say, many killed themselves lest they should fall into the hands of the enemy. 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 agree with it — but those examples which are the more worthy of imitation the more excellent they are in piety.
The patriarchs did not do it, the prophets did not, the apostles did not, because 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 on themselves, lest they should fall into the hands of their persecutors. But if He did not command or advise this, that they should depart from this life in such a manner — they to whom, as they depart, He promised that He would prepare eternal dwellings — 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.
But yet even those men, besides Lucretia, of whom we have above said sufficiently what seemed fitting, do not easily find one on whose authority they might rest their claim, except that Cato who killed himself at Utica; not because he alone did it, but because he was reckoned a learned and upright man, so that it might deservedly be thought that what he did could even rightly have been done, or could be done. Concerning his deed, what shall I chiefly say, except that certain of his friends, even learned men, who more prudently dissuaded this from being done, judged it to be the deed of a weaker rather than a stronger soul — a deed by which was shown not an honorableness guarding against baseness, but a weakness not sustaining adversity? This Cato himself also judged 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 for everything from Caesar's kindness? Why did he not compel him too, along with himself, to death? 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, who did not spare himself? Was it more base to be a victor against command than to endure a victor against honor? By no means, then, did Cato judge it to be base to live under the victor Caesar; otherwise he would have freed his son from this baseness by his paternal sword.
What then, but that, as much as he loved his son, for whom he both hoped and wished that he might be spared by Caesar, so much did he envy Caesar the glory of that very sparing — lest he too should be spared by him, as Caesar himself is reported to have said — or, to put it more mildly on our part, he was ashamed? But these men against whom we are arguing are unwilling that we should prefer to Cato the holy man Job, who chose to endure such horrible evils in his own flesh rather than to escape all torments by inflicting death upon himself, or others of the saints — men most exalted in supreme authority and most worthy of faith from our writings — who chose to endure the captivity and dominion of enemies rather than to inflict death upon themselves; but from their own writings I will prefer that very same Marcus Regulus to Marcus Cato.
For Cato had never conquered Caesar, to whom he scorned to submit when defeated, and, that he might not be subjected, he chose to be slain by his own hand. Regulus, however, had already conquered the Carthaginians, and as a Roman commander he had carried back for the Roman empire a victory that gave no cause for grief among his fellow citizens, but rather one to be praised as won over enemies. Yet afterward, being defeated by them, he preferred to endure them by serving rather than to escape from them by dying. Thus he preserved both patience under the domination of the Carthaginians and steadfastness in his love for the Romans, neither withdrawing his conquered body from the enemy nor his unconquered spirit from his fellow citizens. Nor was it out of love for this present life that he refused to kill himself.
This he proved 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 his words in the senate than in war by arms. Therefore this great despiser of the present life, who preferred to end it under raging enemies by whatever tortures rather than to destroy himself, judged beyond all doubt that it is a great crime if a man should kill himself. Among all their praiseworthy men, renowned for the marks of virtue, the Romans put forward none better: a man whom neither prosperity had corrupted, for amid so great a victory he remained utterly poor, nor whom adversity had broken, for he returned undaunted to such dreadful sufferings.
Furthermore, if the bravest and most illustrious men, defenders of their earthly fatherland and worshippers—of false gods, indeed, yet not deceitful but most truthful even in their oaths—men who by the custom and law of war could have struck down their conquered enemies, yet when themselves conquered by those enemies refused to strike themselves down, and, though they feared death not at all, still preferred to bear their victorious masters rather than to inflict death upon themselves:
how much more will Christians, who worship the true God and long for the heavenly fatherland, refrain from this wickedness, if the divine dispensation has for a time subjected them to enemies, whether to be tested or to be corrected—those whom, in that lowliness, He does not forsake, who for their sake came down so humbly, He the Most High—especially those whom no laws of any military power or of such service constrain to strike even a conquered enemy? What baneful error, then, has crept in, that a man should kill himself either because his enemy has sinned against him, or lest his enemy sin against him, when he would not dare to kill that enemy, whether the enemy has sinned or is about to sin?
[XXV] But it is to be feared and guarded against, they say, lest the body, subjected to lust, entice the soul by the most seductive pleasure to consent to sin. Therefore, they say, one ought to kill oneself not now on account of another's sin, but on account of one's own, before one commits it. By no means, indeed, will the soul do this—consent to the lust of its own flesh aroused by another's lust—the soul which is subject to God and to His wisdom rather 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 foolish as to say: "Let us sin now, lest perhaps we sin later;
let us now commit murder, lest perhaps we later fall into adultery"? Is it not the case that, if iniquity so prevails that not innocence but sins are chosen, it is better to have an uncertain adultery in the future than a certain murder in the present? Is it not better to commit a disgrace that may be healed by repentance than such a deed where no room is left for wholesome repentance? I have said these things on account of those men or women who think that violence must be inflicted upon themselves, that they may die, not for the sake of avoiding another's sin, but their own, lest, being themselves also aroused under another's lust, they perhaps consent to their own.
But far be it from a Christian mind, which trusts in its God and, having placed its hope in Him, leans upon His help—far be it, I say, that such a mind should yield to any pleasures of the flesh so as to consent to shameful deeds. And if that concupiscent disobedience, which still dwells in our dying members, is moved apart from the law of our will, as if by a law of its own, how much more is it without guilt in the body of one who does not consent, if it is without guilt in the body of one who sleeps!
[XXVI] But, they say, certain holy women in time of persecution, in order to escape the pursuers of their chastity, threw themselves into a river that would sweep them away and drown them, and in this manner they died; and their martyrdoms are celebrated in the catholic Church with most frequent veneration. Concerning these I dare pass no rash judgment. For whether divine authority has by certain trustworthy testimonies persuaded the Church so to honor their memory, I do not know; and it may be that it is so. For what if they did this, not deceived by human counsel, but commanded by God, not erring, but obeying?—just as concerning Samson we are not permitted to believe otherwise.
But when God commands and makes clear without any ambiguity that He commands, who would call obedience a crime? Who would accuse the compliance of piety? But one does not therefore act without wickedness, whoever should resolve to sacrifice his son to God, because Abraham did this even praiseworthily. For even a soldier, when in obedience to the power under which he is lawfully placed he kills a man, is by no law of his city guilty of homicide; rather, unless he does it, he is guilty of desertion and contempt of 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 acts unbidden, he shall be punished if he does not act when bidden. But if this is so when a commander orders, how much more when the Creator orders!
Whoever, then, hears that he is not permitted to kill himself, let him do it, if He has commanded whose commands may not be despised; only let him see whether the divine command wavers with any uncertainty. We approach conscience through the ear; we do not usurp for ourselves the judgment of hidden things. No one knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man which is in him. This we say, this we assert, this we approve in every way: that no one ought to inflict a voluntary death upon himself as if to flee temporal troubles, lest he fall into eternal ones; none for the sake of another's sins, lest by this very act he begin to have a most grievous sin of his own, whom another's sin was not defiling; none for the sake of his own past sins, on account of which this life is all the more needful, that they may be healed by repentance;
none as if out of a desire for a better life which is hoped for after death, because a better life after death does not receive those guilty of their own death. [XXVII] There remains one cause, of which I had begun to speak, on account of which it is thought useful for anyone to kill himself, namely, lest he rush into sin either through enticing pleasure or through raging pain. If we should be willing to admit this cause, it will proceed so far as to reach the point where men must be exhorted rather to kill themselves then, when, washed by the laver of holy regeneration, they have received the remission of all sins. For then is the time to guard against all future sins, when all past ones have been blotted out. But if a voluntary death is rightly done, why is it not then done above all? Why does each baptized person spare himself?
Why does he again thrust his liberated head into so many perils of this life, when it is in his easy power to avoid them all by inflicting death upon himself, and when it is written: He who loves danger shall fall into it? Why, then, are so many and so great perils loved, or at least, even if they are not loved, undertaken, while he remains in this life, from which it is permitted to depart? Or does so tasteless a perversity truly overturn the heart and turn it away from the contemplation of truth, that a man should think he must go on living, in order to endure this very world, full of temptations through all its hours—both such as are dreaded under a single captivating master, and countless others without which this life is not led—if a man ought to kill himself lest under the domination of one captor he fall into sin?
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 shorter ways, removed from all perils of sinning—so that whomever we could persuade, after the most recent remission of sins, to seize upon and inflict death upon themselves, we might send them to the Lord holier and purer? But if anyone thinks this ought to be undertaken and urged, I do not say he is foolish, but mad: with what face, then, does he say to a man:
"Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add heavier ones, while you live under a master of barbarous and unchaste ways"—he who cannot but say most wickedly: "Kill yourself, now that all your sins are absolved, lest you again commit such things or even worse, while you live 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 impious to say this, it is assuredly impious to kill oneself. For if there could be any just cause for doing this of one's own accord, beyond doubt there would be none more just than this. But since not even this is just, therefore there is none. [XXVIII] Let not your life, then, be wearisome to you, O faithful ones of Christ, if your chastity was made a mockery by your enemies.
You have 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 untraceable His ways. Yet nevertheless, question your souls faithfully, lest perhaps you exalted yourselves too proudly over this good of integrity and continence and chastity, and, delighted by human praises, envied some others even in this. I do not accuse what I do not know, nor do I hear what your hearts, being questioned, answer to you.
Nevertheless, if they should answer that it is so, do not marvel that you have lost that whereby you longed to please men, but that this has remained to you which cannot be shown to men. If you did not consent to those who sinned, divine aid was added to divine grace, lest it be lost; human reproach came upon human glory, lest it be loved. In both, be consoled, O faint-hearted: on the one hand proved, on the other chastened; on the one hand justified, on the other amended.
But those whose hearts, being questioned, answer that they never took pride in the good of virginity or of widowhood or of conjugal chastity, but, agreeing with the humble, rejoiced with trembling in the gift of God, nor envied anyone an equal excellence of holiness and chastity, but, setting aside human praise—which is wont to be paid the more highly, the rarer is the good that demands the praise—rather wished that the number of such women were larger than that they themselves should stand out more conspicuously in their fewness: let not even these women, who are such, if barbarian lust has crushed some of them also, complain that this was permitted; nor let them therefore believe that God neglects these things, because He permits what no one commits with impunity.
For certain weights, as it were, of evil desires are both relaxed by the hidden present divine judgment and reserved for the manifest final one. But perhaps these women, who are well aware in themselves that they did not exalt their hearts, puffed up out of this good of chastity, and yet suffered hostile violence in the flesh, had something of latent infirmity which might have been lifted up into the pride of arrogance, had they escaped this humiliation in that devastation. Just as, therefore, some were snatched away by death, lest malice change their understanding, so something was snatched from these by force, lest prosperity change their modesty.
To both, therefore—both to those who were already growing proud concerning their flesh, in that it had suffered no shameful contact, and to those who perhaps might have grown proud had it not been violated by the enemy's violence—chastity was not taken away, but humility was instilled; help was brought to the swelling pride of the former, and a check was set upon the imminent pride of the latter. And yet that must not be passed over in silence, that to certain of those who suffered these things it could have seemed that the good of continence must be reckoned among bodily goods, and that it endures only if the body is touched by no one's lust; and that it is not placed solely in the divinely-aided strength of the will, whereby both body and spirit are holy; nor is it such a good as cannot be taken away against the will of the soul;
which error was perhaps taken from them. For when they consider with what conscience they served God, and with unshaken faith do not think of Him that He could in any way forsake those who thus serve Him and call upon Him, and when they cannot doubt how greatly chastity pleases Him, they see it to be consequent that He would by no means have permitted these things to befall His holy ones, if holiness—which He bestowed on them and loves in them—could perish in that manner.
[XXIX] The whole household of the supreme and true God has, therefore, its own consolation, not deceptive nor placed in the hope of wavering or falling things, and a temporal life itself in no way to be repented of, in which it is trained for the eternal, and uses earthly goods as a pilgrim without being held captive by them, while by evils it is either proved 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 such things, for the avoidance of which they either worship them or contend that they must be worshipped. For it answers thus: My God is everywhere present, everywhere whole, nowhere enclosed, who can be present unseen, and be absent without moving away;
when He harasses me with adversities, He either examines my merits or chastens my sins, and reserves for me an eternal reward for temporal evils piously endured. But who are you, with whom it might be worthy to speak even about your gods, much less about my God, who is terrible above all gods; for all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens? [XXX] If that Scipio Nasica of yours, once high priest, whom—when a most excellent man was sought—the whole senate chose under the terror of the Punic War for the receiving of the Phrygian rites, and whose face perhaps you would not dare to look upon, were living, he himself would restrain you from this shamelessness.
For why, when afflicted by adversities, do you complain about the Christian times, unless because you desire to have your luxury secure and, with all harshness of troubles removed, to run riot in your most abandoned ways? For you do not desire to have peace and to abound in every kind of resource in order to use these goods honorably—that is, moderately, soberly, temperately, piously—but that an infinite variety of pleasures may be sought out with mad extravagances, and that, in prosperity, those evils may spring up in your morals which are worse than raging enemies.
But that Scipio, your high priest, that man judged best by the whole senate, fearing this calamity for you, did not wish Carthage, then the rival of the Roman empire, to be destroyed, and opposed Cato when he decreed that it should be destroyed, fearing security for weak minds and seeing that dread was necessary as a suitable guardian, as it were, for citizens who were like wards. Nor did his judgment deceive him: it was proved by the very outcome how truly he spoke.
For when Carthage was destroyed, and thus so great a terror to the Roman republic was driven off and extinguished, so many evils arising from prosperous circumstances immediately followed that, with concord corrupted and shattered—first by savage and bloody seditions, then soon, through a chain of evil causes, by civil wars as well—such slaughters were wrought, so much blood was shed, and inhumanity seethed with such lust for proscriptions and plunder, that those Romans who, while their life was more upright, had feared evils from enemies, now, with the integrity of their life lost, suffered crueler things from their fellow citizens;
and that very lust for domination, which among the other vices of the human race existed in a more unmixed form in the whole Roman people, after it had prevailed in a few of the more powerful, oppressed the rest, worn down and exhausted, under the yoke of servitude also. [XXXI] For when would that lust rest in the most arrogant minds, until, by continuous honors, it should attain to kingly power? But the opportunity for continuing honors would not exist, unless ambition prevailed. And ambition would by no means prevail except in a people corrupted by avarice and luxury.
But the people was made avaricious and luxurious by prosperity, which that Nasica most providently judged ought to be guarded against, when he did not wish the greatest, strongest, and wealthiest city of the enemy to be removed—so that lust might be restrained by fear, lust when restrained might not run to luxury, and, luxury being checked, avarice too might not rage; so that, with these vices shut out, the virtue useful to the state might flourish and grow, and freedom befitting that virtue might endure.