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The City of God

Chapter 17.--Of Suicide Committed Through Fear of Punishment or Dishonor.

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?

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XVII: De morte uoluntaria ob metum poenae siue dedecoris.

Ac per hoc et quae se occiderunt, ne quidquam huiusmodi paterentur, quis humanus adfectus eis nolit ignosci? et quae se occidere noluerunt, ne suo facinore alienum flagitium deuitarent, quisquis eis hoc crimini dederit, ipse crimen insipientiae non cauebit. nam utique si non licet priuata potestate hominem occidere uel nocentem, cuius occidendi licentiam lex nulla concedit, profecto etiam qui se ipsum occidit homicida est, et tanto fit nocentior cum se occiderit, quanto innocentior in ea causa fuit, qua se occidendum putauit. nam si Iudae factum merito detestamur eumque ueritas iudicat, cum se laqueo suspendit, sceleratae illius traditionis auxisse potius quam expiasse commissum, quoniam dei misericordiam desperando exitiabiliter paenitens nullum sibi salubris paenitentiae locum reliquit: quanto magis a sua nece se abstinere debet, qui tali supplicio quod in se puniat non habet. Iudas enim cum se occidit, sceleratum hominem occidit, et tamen non solum Christi, uerum etiam suae mortis reus finiuit hanc uitam, quia licet propter suum scelus alio suo scelere occisus est. cur autem homo, qui mali nihil fecit, sibi malefaciat et se ipsum interficiendo hominem interficiat innocentem, ne alium patiatur nocentem, atque in se perpetret peccatum proprium, ne in eo perpetretur alienum?