not to be followed._
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 honouring 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."[75] 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.