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And consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves to
avoid such disgrace, who that has any human feeling would refuse to
forgive them.?
And as for those who would not put an end to their lives, lest they
might seem to escape the crime of another by a sin of their own, he who
lays this to their charge as a great wickedness is himself not guiltless
of the fault of folly. For if it is not, lawful to take the law into
our own hands, and slay even a guilty person, whose death no public
sentence has warranted, then certainly he who kills himself is a
homicide, and so much the guiltier of his own death, as he was more
innocent of that offence for which he doomed himself to die. Do we
justly execrate the deed of Judas, and does truth itself pronounce
that by hanging himself he rather aggravated than expiated the guilt of
that most iniquitous betrayal, since, by despairing of God's mercy
in his sorrow that wrought death, he left to himself no place for a
healing penitence? How much more ought he to abstain from laying
violent hands on himself who has done nothing worthy of such a
punishment! For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked
man; but he passed from this life chargeable not only with the death of
Christ, but with his own: for though he killed himself on account of
his crime, his killing himself was another crime. Why, then, should
a man who has done no ill do ill to himself, and by killing himself
kill the innocent to escape another's guilty act, and perpetrate upon
himself a sin of his own, that the sin of another may not be
perpetrated on him?
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