Chapter 27.—Whether Voluntary Death Should Be Sought in Order to Avoid Sin.

There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and which is thought a sound one,—namely, to prevent one’s falling into sin either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain.  If this reason were a good one, then we should be impelled to exhort men at once to destroy themselves, as soon as they have been washed in the laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin.  Then is the time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out.  And if this escape be lawfully secured by suicide, why not then specially?  Why does any baptized person hold his hand from taking his own life?  Why does any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself to them, when he has power so easily to rid himself of them all, and when it is written, “He who loveth danger shall fall into it?”54    Ecclus. iii. 27.  Why does he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which he may legitimately depart?  But is any one so blinded and twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth, as to think that, though a man ought to make away with himself for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought yet to live, and so expose himself to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all those evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to numberless other miseries in which this life inevitably implicates us?  What reason, then, is there for our consuming time in those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or vidual continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple and compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned?  If any one thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I say not he is foolish, but mad.  With what face, then, can he say to any man, “Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add a heinous sin, while you live under an unchaste master, whose conduct is that of a barbarian?”  How can he say this, if he cannot without wickedness say, “Kill yourself, now that you are washed from all your sins, lest you fall again into similar or even aggravated sins, while you live in a world which has such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to torment by its horrible cruelties, to overcome by its errors and terrors?”  It is wicked to say this; it is therefore wicked to kill oneself.  For if there could be any just cause of suicide, this were so.  And since not even this is so, there is none.

CAPUT XXVII. An propter declinationem peccati mors spontanea appetenda sit.

Restat una causa, de qua dicere coeperam, qua utile putatur, ut se quisque interficiat, scilicet ne in peccatum irruat, vel blandiente voluptate, vel dolore saeviente. Quam causam si voluerimus admittere, eo usque progressa perveniet, ut hortandi sint homines tunc se potius interimere, cum lavacro sanctae regenerationis abluti, universorum remissionem acceperint peccatorum. Tunc enim tempus est cavendi omnia futura peccata, cum omnia sunt deleta praeterita. Quod si morte spontanea recte fit, cur non tunc potissimum fit? cur baptizatus sibi quisque parcit? cur liberatum caput tot rursus vitae hujus periculis inserit, cum sit facillimae potestatis illata sibi nece omnia devitare, scriptumque sit, Qui amat periculum, incidit in illud (Eccli. III, 27)? Cur ergo amantur tot et tanta pericula, vel certe, etiamsi non amantur, suscipiuntur, cum manet in hac vita cui abscedere licitum est? An vero tam insulsa perversitas cor evertit, et a consideratione veritatis avertit, ut, si se quisque interimere debet, ne unius captivantis dominatu corruat in peccatum, vivendum sibi existimet, ut ipsum perferat mundum per omnes horas tentationibus plenum, et talibus, quales sub uno domino formidantur , et innumerabilibus caeteris, sine quibus haec vita non ducitur? Quid igitur causae est, cur in eis exhortationibus tempora consumamus, quibus baptizatos alloquendo studemus accendere, sive ad virginalem integritatem, sive ad continentiam vidualem, sive ad ipsam tori conjugalis fidem; cum habeamus meliora et ab omnibus peccandi periculis remota compendia, ut, quibuscumque post remissionem recentissimam peccatorum arripiendam mortem sibique ingerendam persuadere potuerimus, eos ad Dominum saniores purioresque mittamus? Porro si quisquis hoc aggrediendum et suadendum putat, non dico desipit, sed insanit: qua tandem fronte homini dicit, Interfice te, ne parvis tuis peccatis adjicias gravius, dum vivis sub domino barbaris moribus impudico, qui non potest nisi sceleratissime dicere, Interfice te, peccatis tuis omnibus absolutis, ne rursus talia vel etiam pejora committas; dum vivis in mundo tot impuris voluptatibus illecebroso, tot nefandis crudelitatibus furioso, tot erroribus et terroribus inimico? Hoc quia nefas est dicere, nefas est profecto se occidere. Nam si hoc sponte faciendi ulla causa justa esse posset, procul dubio justior quam ista non esset. Quia vero nec ista est, ergo nulla est.