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?