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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." 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.
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