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Our opponents are offended at our preferring to Cato the saintly
Job, who endured dreadful evils in his body rather than deliver
himself from all torment by self-inflicted death; or other saints, of
whom it is recorded in our authoritative and trustworthy books that they
bore captivity and the oppression of their enemies rather than commit
suicide. But their own books authorize us to prefer to Marcus Cato,
Marcus Regulus. For Cato had never conquered Caesar; and when
conquered by him, disdained to submit himself to him, and that he
might escape this submission put himself to death. Regulus, on the
contrary, had formerly conquered the Carthaginians, and in command of
the army of Rome had won for the Roman republic a victory which no
citizen could bewail, and which the enemy himself was constrained to
admire; yet afterwards, when he in his turn was defeated by them, he
preferred to be their captive rather than to put himself beyond their
reach by suicide. Patient under the domination of the Carthaginians,
and constant in his love of the Romans, he neither deprived the one of
his conquered body, nor the other of his unconquered spirit. Neither
was it love of life that prevented him from killing himself. This was
plainly enough indicated by his unhesitatingly returning, on account of
his promise and oath, to the same enemies whom he had more grievously
provoked by his words in the senate than even by his arms in battle.
Having such a contempt of life, and preferring to end it by whatever
torments excited enemies might contrive, rather than terminate it by
his own hand, he could not more distinctly have declared how great a
crime he judged suicide to be. Among all their famous and remarkable
citizens, the Romans have no better man to boast of than this, who
was neither corrupted by prosperity, for he remained a very poor man
after winning such victories; nor broken by adversity, for he returned
intrepidly to the most miserable end. But if the bravest and most
renowned heroes, who had but an earthly country to defend, and who,
though they had but false gods, yet rendered them a true worship, and
carefully kept their oath to them; if these men, who by the custom and
right of war put conquered enemies to the sword, yet shrank from
putting an end to their own lives even when conquered by their enemies;
if, though they had no fear at all of death, they would yet rather
suffer slavery than commit suicide, how much rather must Christians,
the worshippers of the true God, the aspirants to a heavenly
citizenship, shrink from this act, if in God's providence they have
been for a season delivered into the hands of their enemies to prove or
to correct them! And certainly, Christians subjected to this
humiliating condition will not be deserted by the Most High, who for
their sakes humbled Himself. Neither should they for get that they
are bound by no laws of war, nor military orders, to put even a
conquered enemy to the sword; and if a man may not put to death the
enemy who has sinned, or may yet sin against him, who is so infatuated
as to maintain that he may kill himself because an enemy has sinned, or
is going to sin, against him?
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