are pre-eminently distinguished._
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 Cæsar; 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 forget 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?