John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  Since, on this reading, the hastening of our death by such an act is the same as complete self-homicide, let us consider how far unreproved custom, example, and law either allow it or command it. That it is allowable seems to me somewhat proved in that “Before any man accuses him, a malefactor may go and declare his fault to the judge,” according to Soto.

  Among Italian narratives, the one in Sansovino concerning England has many marks and impressions of malice. He tells of a custom, which he falsely says is observed here. “Men condemned to be hanged are always accompanied to their executions by all their kindred, who then hang on their feet to hasten their end. Also, when a patient is abandoned by the physicians, his nearest kinsman strangles him with a pillow.” The author had this much ground, that ordinarily at executions men, out of charity as they think, do so, and women who despair of sick persons’ recovery used to take their pillows from under them and so let them die sooner. Have they any more dominion over these bodies than the persons themselves? Or if a man were able to do these things to himself, might he not do so? Or might he not with a safe conscience put so many weights in his pockets as would accomplish the stretching? I speak only comparatively; might he not do it as well as they?

  In my understanding, such an act either by an executioner or a bystander is in no way justifiable, for it is an injury both to the party, whom a sudden pardon might redeem, and to the judge, who has appointed a painful death to deter others from crime. The breaking of the legs of crucified men (John 19:32), which was done to hasten death, was not allowed except by petition. The law might be much defrauded if such violence might be used where the breaking of the halter delivered the prisoner from death, as it does in some places. Good opinions concur that one should always do without doubt whatever makes for easy, or escapes painful, passage out of this life. In such cases a man may do things more allowably by his own act than a stranger may. For the law of nature inclines and excuses him. Others are forbidden by many laws to hasten his death, because they are otherwise interested only as parts of the whole body of the state, and thus it concerns them that justice be executed. We see that this, like the case of withdrawing the pillows, is ordinarily done and counted a pious deed. The Athenian executions were always by the hand of the offender in judgments of death by poison.

  In the law of purgation assigned by God to ease a man on whom the spirit of jealousy had fallen, the woman was to take the water of curses and bitterness, which would make her infamous and make her belly swell and her thighs rot (Num. 5:11-22). Those forms of purgation that were called common ones lasted long, even in the church, for there is nothing extant against them until Steven V in the year 885. Charlemagne, in whom the church acknowledged enough piety, introduced one form more severe than the rest, which was to walk on nine burning harrows.

  When a bishop named Brito was extrajudicially calumnied by the people for having gotten his laundress with child, after his innocence had prevailed so far with God that the one-month-old child, being adjured in the name of Christ, exonerated him, Brito did not accept it but chose and performed a kind of purgation by carrying burning coals upon his head. Evidently in England both kinds of trial by ordeal, by water and by fire, lasted until King John’s time. Although men were forced to go into the ordeal of boiling water, that was only for the meaner sort, but to carry the three-pound weight of red-hot iron, which was for the purgation of persons of better quality, was an act (as all the foregoing were) in which a man must of necessity do something actually against himself and be the executioner of his own judgment. As long as these forms of purgation—and the other, by battle—were legal, they were lawfully done.

  In Saint Dorotheus, who everywhere professed a love of the obedience that he himself called indiscreet, you will read many praises given to men who not only forsook themselves but actually furthered their destruction—although not effectually, which makes no difference, if it is in dangers that men usually do not escape. He praises one friar who, being commanded by his abbot to return one night, when the waters were risen that night committed himself to a raging torrent in such an act of obedience.

  Another was bidden by his abbot to go into the town where he suspected he would fall into some temptation by a certain spectacle. He went, but with the protestation that he hoped he was in the protection not of God but of the one who sent him. But the most natural story to our present purpose is this. A hoary old man, seeing his servant mistake poison for honey and put it into his broth, ate it nevertheless and without chiding. When the servant perceived it and exclaimed, “Sir, I have killed you,” he answered, “It’s all the same, for if God would have had me eat honey he would have directed your hand to the honey.” We have sufficient testimony to the holiness of Joseph of Arimathaea who, being sent by the apostles to preach the gospel, among other persecutions was constrained to drink poison, which necessarily involved the act that we now discuss. How much did Saint Andrew contribute to his own crucifixion? How much did Saint Lawrence contribute to his own broiling when he called to the tyrant, “This side is done; turn the other, and then eat”? “Great men make precepts by their deeds,” says Quintilian. These acts of men who otherwise are counted holy may always be good warrants and examples to us, when the cause is not prejudged by any greater authority such as scripture or councils, nor that very act accused by any author.

  But to stay no longer with examples, among casuists I observe that the greater number denies that it is lawful for a condemned man to do the last, immediate act that leads to his death, such as the drinking of poison, but they agree that he may do the acts that are somewhat more removed.

  Francisco de Vitoria defines even this act of drinking poison as lawful. Thus among them it is not clear whether or not a man may do it. Indeed, in very many cases it is not only lawful to do as much without any condemnation, but also it is necessary, and by their rules sinful, to omit it. Curates must go into infected houses to administer the sacraments. If a priest enters a woods where three wait to kill him, and one of them, repenting of that purpose, meets him and under the seal of confession discloses the fault, the priest is bound to go forward to a certain death in the woods rather than by returning let the others know that he learned in confession of their plan. So peremptory is their doctrine, whatever be their practice, against revealing confessions. Although this may perhaps seem a wanton case, framed on impossible happenings, as Soto counts it, the reason may have this use: that although self-preservation is divine natural law and the seal of confession is only divine positive law, still, because the circumstances are not the same, in this case a public good must be preserved above his private life. Thus we may do some acts ourselves that probably—even certainly, as far as human knowledge goes—lead to our destruction, which is the nearest step to the last act of doing it entirely ourselves.

  8. We spoke of this last act of self-homicide while considering the law of nature and must speak of it again when we come to understand those texts in scripture that seem to aim towards it. Before we conclude this part about the law of reason, we may aptly present such deductions, comparisons, and consequences as may reasonably seem to annihilate or diminish this fault. Because most will be grounded either in the conscience of the doer or in the church’s opinion of the deed when it is done, we will consider how far an erring conscience may justify any act. Then we will produce some examples of persons guilty of this who were nevertheless canonized by the church’s admitting them into the martyrology and assigning them their feasts, offices, vigils, and such religious celebrations. We need make no use of the example of Pythagoras, who rather than offend his philosophical conscience either by treading on the beans himself or by suffering his scholars to speak before their time, delivered up himself and forty of his scholars to his enemy’s sword.

  To avoid the deceitful ambiguities and multiform entanglings of the scholastics, we will follow what is delivered for the common opinion. A conscience that errs justly, probably, and in good faith—that is, after all moral industry
and diligence have been used (I do not mean exquisite diligence but such as is proportionate to the person and his quality and to the knowledge that that man is bound to have of that thing at that time)—is bound to act according to the misinformation and the mis- persuasion thus contracted. Moreover, with a conscience that errs negligently or otherwise viciously and in bad faith, as long as the error remains and resides in the conscience, a man is bound not to act against his conscience. In the first case, if one thinks in his conscience that he ought to lie to save an innocent person or that he ought to steal to save a famished man, he is a homicide if he does not lie or steal. In the second case, although he is not bound to any act, it is lawful for him to admit anything otherwise necessary.

  This obligation that our conscience lays upon us is of stronger hold and of narrower band than the precept of any superior, whether a law or a person, and is so much of natural right that it cannot be infringed or altered by the benefit of divine indulgence, to use their own words. As that doctrine is to be gathered everywhere among the casuists, so it is well collected, amassed, argued, and confirmed, especially by Azorius.

  If a man, after convenient and requisite diligence, despoiled of all human affection and self-interest and “Burning with the holy fire of good impatience,” as Paulinus says, in conscience believes that he is invited by the spirit of God to do what Jonah, Abraham, and perhaps Samson did, who according to these rules can condemn this to be sin?

  Thus I suspect there was some haste and precipitousness in the judgment of Cassian, otherwise a just esteemer and valuer of works of devotion and obedience, who pronounces the apparition of an angel to Heron the desert monk, who after fifty years was so intense and earnest in attending God’s service and in religious negligence of himself that he would hardly omit Easter Day from his strict fasting, and being now full of the awareness of victories (so the panegyric says)—Cassian calls the apparition an illusion of the devil to make Heron destroy himself. Yet Heron, being drawn out of the well into which he had cast himself and living three days afterwards, persisted in a devout acknowledgment that it was the spirit of God that solicited him to do it. Heron died in such constant assurance and alacrity that Paphnutius the abbot, although at first in some suspense, did not number him among the self-homicides, who were persons reputed to have viciously killed themselves.

  Nor may it necessarily be concluded that this act was therefore evil if it appeared to be from the devil. For Wier tells us of a maid whom the devil persuaded to go on a certain pilgrimage and at a certain altar to hear a mass for the recovery of her health. Surely if, as Vazquez holds, “It is not idolatry to worship the devil in an apparition if I think it is God,” it can be no offense to believe him, after I have used all means to discern and distinguish! Those rules that are delivered ordinarily by which to know the devil are apparently false—a difference in his hands or feet, or some notable deformity of horns or a tail, of which Binsfeld seems confident of the first and Menghi of the second.

  Even the rule that God always infuses or commands good things, if it is understood to apply to what is good in the common and natural course of events, is not always safe, for it did not hold in Abraham’s case nor in that of the Israelites. Vazquez’s first excuse, that such worship is not idolatry because by reason of our immediate relation to God we never arrest nor stop the devil by the way, will do no good in our case of believing. But his other excuse will help which he has in the same place; namely, that there may be an invincible ignorance, and that in such ignorance any exterior act whatever that proceeds from a sincere and pure intention of the mind is an act of true religion. More safely than the panegyric could say to Constantine, “His own wisdom is his deity,” may we say of every man’s conscience that is thus rectified.

  Therefore, if they will still turn in their circle and say, God concurs in no evil, we say nothing is so evil but that it becomes good if God commands it. Moreover, self-homicide is not so naturally evil that it requires a special commission from God. Just as it becomes good if he commands it, so it becomes neutral if he removes the reasons conditioning the precept against it.

  If they return to Saint Augustine’s two reasons against Donatus—the first was, “We have authority to save your body against your will,” and the second was, “None of the faithful ever did this act”—we are thereby hastened to the other consideration, how those who have done it have been esteemed by the Catholic Church.

  A little needs to be said in passing about Saint Augustine’s second reason. The first has very little force since, although it may be lawful to preserve a man who is willing to die, it is not always meritorious or obligatory to do so. Thus Ignatius so earnestly exhorted the Romans not to try to preserve him. Also, the civic crown, which was given to any who had rescued a citizen in the wars, was not given, even if he produced witnesses of the deed, unless the person so rescued confessed that he benefited thereby. In the second reason, why does Saint Augustine refer Donatus to examples? For if Donatus had produced any (as from credible and authentic stories he might have produced very many, and out of the scriptures that in Saint Augustine’s opinion were canonical he might have alleged the examples of Eleazar and Razis), Saint Augustine was always provided with the refuge that it was special inspiration and not to be followed or imitated.

  Had it been a good argument in Rome for 500 years that divorce was not lawful, because there was no example of it?—or for almost 2,000 years that a woman might not sue for divorce against her husband, because before Herod’s daughter there was no example of it? But when the church has persevered so long not only in justifying but also in solemnizing many examples of self-homicide, are not Saint Augustine’s disciples guilty of the same pertinacity that is imputed to Aristotle’s followers who, defending the heavens to be unalterable because in so many ages nothing had been observed to have been altered, his scholars still stubbornly maintain his proposition, although by many experiences of new stars (according to Kepler) the reason that moved Aristotle now seems to be utterly defeated?

  Having spoken this much about Saint Augustine and having purposely postponed the examples recorded in the scriptures for our third part, we will consider some examples registered in ecclesiastical history.

  The church—whose dignity and constancy it well becomes that the rule of its own law always be justly said of itself, “What once was acceptable cannot later be unacceptable,” unless new reasons interpose— celebrates on February 9 the birth (that is, the death) of the virgin and martyr Apollonia. After the persecutors had beaten out her teeth and vexed her with many other tortures, she was led to the fire. Being inflamed with a more burning fire of the Holy Ghost, she broke from the officer’s grasp and leaped into the fire. For this act of hers many advocates take up her case and say that either the story is not certain (although the sources are Bede, Usuard, Ado, and, as Baronius says, others of the Latins), or else, says Sayer, you must answer that she was brought very near the fire and as good as thrown in, or else that she was provoked to do it by divine inspiration. Unless it was another divine inspiration—true charity—that moved the beholders back then to believe and the church ever since to acknowledge that she thus did a noble and Christian act to the special glory of God, this act of hers as well as of any others might have been calumnied to have been done out of weariness of life, or fear of relapsing, or haste to reach heaven, or the ambition of martyrdom.

  The memory of Pelagia as a virgin and martyr is celebrated on June 9. To be sure, the history of this woman suffers some perplexity and gives occasion to doubt its truth. Ambrose says that she and her mother drowned themselves, and Chrysostom says that they flung themselves down from a house-top. And Baronius finds this knot so hard to disentangle that he says, “There is nothing we say to this.” Nevertheless, the church, as I said, celebrates her act as though it were glad to take any occasion of approving such courage in such a cause, which was only preservation of chastity. “Their martyrdom,” says Saint Augustine, “was always in the Catholi
c Church frequented by the utmost veneration.”

  Saint Ambrose, when his sister Marcellina consulted him directly on what might be thought of those who kill themselves in such cases (and it is agreed by all that the opinions of the Fathers are to be especially valued when they speak of a matter not incidentally or casually but directly and deliberately), answered, “We have an example of such a martyrdom in Pelagia.” Then he presented to his sister this religious meditation, “Let us die if we may have leave or if we are denied leave, yet let us die. God cannot be offended with this when we use it only for a remedy and our faith takes away all offense. Here is no difficulty, for who is willing to die and cannot, since there are so many ways to death? I will not trust my hand lest it fail to strike home nor my breast lest it withdraw itself. I will leave no escape to my flesh, for we can die with our own weapons and without the benefit of an executioner.” [Donne’s paraphrase of Ambrose’s account of Pelagia is continued in quotation marks.] “Then, having dressed herself as a bride and going into the water, she says, ‘Here let us be baptized. This is the baptism where sins are forgiven and where a kingdom is purchased, and this is a baptism after which none sins. This water regenerates, this makes us virgins, this opens heavens, defends the feeble, delivers from death, and makes us martyrs. Only we pray to God that this water not scatter us but reserve us to one funeral.’ Then they entered as in a dance, hand in hand, where the torrent was deepest and most violent. Thus they died, as their mother upon the bank called them ‘These prelates of virginity, captains of chastity, and companions in martyrdom.’”