John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  Besides that, by his leave, we desire many things that are against the sense of nature. But to grant that we may wish death in order to be in heaven, although Peter Martyr, as noted above, is of the same persuasion, is a larger scope and somewhat more dangerous and slippery a grant than we are urging towards, because only the interest and good of the party seems to be considered. Nevertheless, Manoel de Sa extends it further: “We may wish someone’s sickness for his correction. We may wish someone’s death for the good of the state. We may even wish death to our enemy who is likely to do us much harm, or to avoid something particularly damaging to us. We may rejoice at our enemy’s death, even for the consideration of our own deliverance.” All of these hold as well if we are urged for similar reasons to wish our own death.

  To conclude this point that it may be lawful to wish our own death, I shall just tell a story that, although it is only matter-of-fact, if it is that much, is of a person whose acts govern and persuade very many, as far as rules go. In the life of Philip Neri, who in our age instituted the last religious order approved and established in the Church of Rome, we read that he was entreated, as he commonly was in such desperate cases, to come to one Paulus Maximus, a youth of fourteen years, who was then ready to depart this life because of sickness. Before Neri could finish his sacrifice and the service had begun—even before the message reached him—the young man died. When he had been dead about half an hour, Neri came. After he had used some loud exclamations, the youth revived, looked up, and talked in secret with Neri for a quarter of an hour. When the discourse ended, Neri gave him his choice, whether he would live or die, and when the boy chose death he gave him permission to die again. This was the greatest miracle in that whole book—if anybody should believe all that are in it, for there are attributed to Neri stranger things than the Book of Conformities imagined about Saint Francis. (I believe the author, like Xenophon or Plato or Sir Thomas More, meant to imagine and idealize rather than to write a credible history, although Sedulius has defended the book lately and with much earnestness.) At any rate, this much is established: whether fable or history, the opinion of those who authored this book is that it was lawful for Maximus to wish his own death, since a man of so much sanctity as Neri approved, seconded, and accomplished his choice.

  5. The next species of homicide in Toledo’s division is homicide by permission. When it is done to ourselves, the scholastics usually called it desertion or dereliction and negative death.

  I find no instance of this species to be more obnoxious or indefensible than the one that is so common with our delinquents; namely, to stand mute at the bar of justice. To be sure, civil laws, which often force us to choose the lesser of two evils (that is to say, the least hurtful to civility and society) and must sometimes allow a particular mischief rather than a general inconvenience, may excuse standing mute at the bar. By the law of conscience, no case may become so entangled and perplexed that one is forced to choose anything naturally evil, but no man has as yet, to my knowledge, impugned our custom of standing mute. Thus it strikes me that our church as well as our state justifies this desertion of ourselves for so low and worldly a consideration as saving our temporal estate or escaping the ignominy of another death.

  To discern better how far these omissions, desertions, and exposings of ourselves are allowed us, I must first interpret a rule of Soto’s: “That charity begins with itself is to be understood only in spiritual things.” For I may not commit a sin, in the language of the scholastics, to save the goods, honor, or life of the pope, but for temporal things I must prefer others before myself if a public profit will recompense my private damage. I must also lay down another rule from Navarrus, “That as for myself, so for my neighbor whom I an bound to love as myself” I may expose goods to safeguard honor, I may expose honor for life, and I may expose life for spiritual profit. To these I must join a third rule from Maldonado, “That no man is at any time forced to exercise his privilege.” Writes Ennenckel, “Every man is bound to know the written law, but privileges and exemptions from that law he excusably may be ignorant of, and in such ignorance transgress them.” From this it is safely inferred that, because every man naturally has the privilege to resist force with force, he is thereby authorized to lay violent hands upon the pope’s life (as Gerson exemplifies) or upon the emperor’s (as Ennenckel exemplifies) when either of them exceeds the limits of his magistracy. For then the party becomes the deputy and lieutenant to nature, which is a sovereign common and equal to them all.

  I may waive this benefit if I will, and I may suffer myself to be killed even by a thief rather than kill him in his mortal sin. Our countryman, Sayer, holds this as the common opinion from Soto, Navarrus, Cajetan, and many others. None that I have seen takes exception to it in any person other than a soldier or one who has the lives and dignities of others so wrapped up in their own that they cannot give themselves away except by betraying others. Such desertion seems to accord with natural reason, because it is found in all laws. Even in the Koran we read, “He who takes vengeance is not answerable for it, but he who patiently suffers a wrong acts best.”

  Our law punishes a man who kills another in his own necessary defense with the loss of goods, and it delivers him from death not by acquittal but by pardon. This seems to me to pronounce plainly that it is not lawful to defend my life by killing another, which is farther than any of the others went. When I compare our two laws—one that if I defend myself I am punished, and the other (aforementioned) that if I kill myself I am punished in the same manner and measure—they seem to me to be somewhat perplexed and captious.

  Just as I may take leave of my natural privilege of defending myself, so may I obtain help from any extrinsic or accessory source that by chance or by providence (if God does not reveal his will) is presented to me. “For a man condemned to death is not bound in conscience to redeem his life with money, although by law of place he might do it,” according to Sa. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that “He who is condemned to die kills himself if he does not seize an opportunity to escape by flight when it is presented, and likewise if he refuses meat when he is condemned to be starved,” but the whole stream is against him—Soto, Navarro, Cajetan, and Sayer. Dr. Navarrus adds that in these days a man is bound to starve rather than to eat meat offered to idols, even though one now is not so likely to be a symbol of this idolatrous perversity.

  Therefore, these authorities say that Aquinas’s opinion that a man is bound to use his privilege to safeguard his life is only true when he does not waive it for some end better and worthier than our natural life. All spiritual advantages are of this sort. In these cases they all agree that we may abandon and forsake ourselves.

  We may step farther yet into this kind of desertion, for we may offer ourselves for the good of our neighbor. The temporal life cannot be more precious than our soul, which, strictly speaking, is murdered by every sin consented unto. Yet Chrysostom says, “No praise is enough to give to Sarah for consenting to lie and to submit herself to adultery to save her husband’s life.”

  I know that Saint Augustine is earnest against this point. But his earnestness turns on a matter of fact, for he denies that either Abraham or Sarah consented to any sin. When he disputes whether according to law Sarah by Abraham’s consent might expose herself to save his life (Gen. 12:10-20, 20:1-18), he is also much troubled by the example of one who was prisoner under Acindynus, a prefect under Constantius, because of debt to the state. When his wife was solicited by a rich man who would give her enough to free her husband if he could possess her for one night, by her husband’s consent she earned his liberty in that manner. In the end Augustine leaves it neutral for any man to think self- homicide either lawful or unlawful in such a necessity, although his own opinion indeed declines from it. Bonaventure denies that for the temporal good of another I may willingly offer my life, but he grounds it on the same reason that Augustine does, that we may not love another more than ourselves, which in this case we seem to be doing.
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br />   But many of the Fathers such as Jerome, Ambrose, and Lactantius, and many scholastics such as Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria, Soto, Banez, and infinite others are against him. They answer Saint Augustine that in this case a man does not prefer his friend over himself, but he prefers acts of virtue and of friendship, as things of a more spiritual nature, over his own temporal life.

  That for the spiritual good of another a man should expose his own life is an unresisted doctrine. Sayer says, “It is under precept.” Thus a curate is bound to baptize and to anoint in the time of a plague. Yes, it is an act of virtue, though not of necessity, as in the curate’s case, “To visit a sick man in such a time, although you are a private man and your aim is not spiritual comfort,” says Sa.

  We may proceed even further, for we may lawfully dispossess ourselves of that which has been afforded us and without which we can have no hope of sustaining our lives. In a persecution, for example, a private man, having food sufficient only to sustain one man, may give it to a public person and so perish. Only Soto denies that in a shipwreck, after we have both been in equal danger, if I catch a fish and get myself something to sustain me, I may give this to my father or to a magistrate. Here Soto stands against the force of Navarrus, Toledo, Francisco de Vitoria, and many others.

  The farthest and uttermost degree of this desertion is inordinate, indiscreet, voluntary fasting. As it is written into the canons, Saint Jerome says, “By such an immoderate innocence and indiscreet singing of psalms and offices a man loses his dignity and incurs the reputation of madness.” About this writing Navarrus says that Saint Jerome pronounces “Indiscreet fasting that shortens the life” to be self-homicide “if the party perceives that it works that effect, even if it is done without any intention to shorten his life and done in order to be better able to satisfy God.” Speaking of the same intention, he adds in another place, “It makes no difference whether you are long in killing yourself or do it at once.”

  Cassian expressly says, “That friar killed himself who, having vowed in his journey to eat nothing unless God himself gave him meat, refused to eat when thieves who customarily killed travelers at that place came and presented him bread.” Although he says he killed himself, he nevertheless imputes to him nothing but indiscretion.

  Therefore, Bosquier says, “Our savior Christ did not exceed forty days in his fast so he would not seem a self-homicide.” He interprets the words, “He hungered,” to mean, “Then he perceived his body to languish and suffer detriment by fasting.” For, if he had not hungered until then, his fasting would have had no virtue, so that he gave in when he found the state of his body impaired by fasting, still pursuing and imitating the superstition of the philosophers who taught that “While we strengthen the body, we are being made more mortal,” and that “By attenuation we are made like God.” How much the writers in the Roman Church allow and obliquely exhort these inordinate fasts and other disciplines appears from what I cited above from Scribanius—indeed, wherever they have occasion to speak of this matter. On that topic more than any other do they so often inculcate, “It was the practice of the devil to appear to Saint Francis and cry out to him that no man who kills himself with such maceration could be saved,” which Bonaventure relates in his life of Francis.

  They teach that we ought to outdo whatever others have done. They say, “The monks in Prester John’s dominions fast strictly for fifty days, standing all the while in water up to the chin.” They find in the chronicles of Konrad of Lichtenau, abbot of Ursperg, the story of a maid who fasted two years and a half after she had received [in communion] the body of our blessed savior. They say a desert monk fasted twenty-two years without eating or drinking anything. They say no fast can be too severe that is undertaken to reduce our body to tameness. Indeed Sayer says, “Although that tameness is already perfectly accomplished, still a man is bound to the fasts that are enjoined.” Aquinas says, “Fasting, even without charity, washes away sin.”

  By this rigor of fasting they seem sure that our savior stayed awake all those forty days (Matt. 4:2, Mark 1:13, Luke 4:2), because, says Bosquier, “He who takes bed takes breakfast.” But since it is unlikely that Moses slept in his forty days of conversation with God (Exod. 24:18), it is also unlikely that Christ did any less than he. Saint Francis is extolled by them for observing three Lents every year—just what Saint Jerome so detested in the Montanists—and, although their aims were different, still this shows that to some aims these enormous witherings of our bodies are allowable. For that reason John the Baptist’s austerity (Matt. 3:4) is so much dignified, and Saint Peter’s feeding on lupines, and Saint Matthew’s living without meat. The Emperor Justinian “In an extreme sickness during Lent would take nothing but herbs, salt, and water.” According to the Carthusian rule, even though it appears that meat would save the patient’s life, he may not eat it. According to the Apostolic Constitutions, which Torres extols so much that by them he refuses much of the Beformed Church’s doctrine, “A man must fast to death rather than receive any meat from an excommunicated person.” In another chapter, “In a case of extreme necessity if anything is accepted from such a person, it may be bestowed in full, so that their alms may be burned and consumed to ashes—but not meat with which to nourish ourselves.”

  To end this section on desertion: since we may waive our defense that the law gives by leaving our case to a jury; since nature allows us to repel force with force; since I may without fleeing (or eating when I have the means) turn myself over to an executioner or a famine; since I may offer my life, even for another’s temporal good, which I must do for his spiritual good; since I may give another my board in a shipwreck and so drown; since I may hasten my arrival in heaven by consuming penances; since all that is the case, it is a wayward and ignoble stubbornness in argument to say I must not kill myself but I may let myself die. As to affirmations and denials, of omissions and commissions, of injunctions and prohibitory commands, always the one implies and enwraps the other. If the matter can be resolved and governed only by an outward act and always by that, then if I forbear to swim in a river and so perish, because there is no act, I shall not be guilty. But I shall be guilty if I discharge at myself a pistol that I did not know was loaded and intended no harm, because there is an act.

  Mariana the Jesuit seems to be of this latter opinion, as we shall have occasion to note in the next member and species of homicide, which is abstinence.

  6. Before we come to that topic, we must consider another species of homicide, which is mutilation or maiming—although it neither is nor naturally could be included in Toledo’s division.

  In civil courts self-maiming is not subject to the same penalty as self- homicide. But if it is accompanied by the same malignity it is in conscience the same sin, especially towards ourselves, because it violates the same reason, that nobody may encroach upon the body over which he has no dominion.

  For that reason it is also unlawful for us to deliver ourselves into bondage—which I mention here because it arises from the same ground, and I am loath to accord it a particular section. Yet the holy Paulinus, a confessor and bishop of Nola, than whom I find no man celebrated with more fame of sanctity and integrity, in order to redeem a widow’s son delivered himself as a slave to the Vandals and was exported from Italy to Africa—when as a bishop he was needed in his place, I think, for it happened only five years before his death.

  To return to mutilation, it is clear from the canons that with reference to illegality it counts as much and goes as far to have maimed as to have killed. A council at London in 1075 passed a canon that forbids a clergyman to be present at a judgment of death or of mutilation. Among the Apostolic Canons is this one, “He who castrates himself cannot be a clergyman because he is a homicide of himself and an enemy to God’s creature.” In our law, “To castrate is to maim.” In the next canon it is said, “A clergyman who castrates himself must be deposed because he is a self-homicide. For that fault a layman must be excommunicated for three years, be
cause he betrays his own life.” Castration was therefore counted equivalent to killing. Calvin counted it so heinous that he built his argument against divorce on this ground, “God made them one body, and in no case is it lawful for a man to tear his own body.” But if castration is as lawful as divorces are lawful, certainly the peremptory sentence against it must admit of some modification!

  There are, of course, examples of holy men who have maimed themselves to disable themselves from taking on the burden of priesthood. One was Saint Mark the Evangelist, who to that end cut off his thumb.

  Also, since our savior said, “Many should castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:12), Athenagoras fifty [actually, 150] years after Christ says that many did it. Apart from these examples, nobody doubts what Sayer says, “That a man unjustly detained to a sure execution may cut off the limb by which he is tied, if he has no other way to escape; or, being surrounded by dogs, he may cut off a hand and cast it to them in order to distract them while he escapes.”

  7. The last species of homicide in Toledo’s argument is this: the last act is an actual helping and concurrence to it. Every step and degree conducing purposely to that end is by judges of conscience justly called homicide. So Arduino, reckoning up all poisons that have a natural malignity and tendency to destroy man’s body, does not exclude a flea, although it never kills, because it tries to do so and does all the damage it can. He is diligent in assigning preservatives and restoratives against the flea.

  Upon the Amalekite who told David he helped Saul die when he found him too weak to stab himself, David pronounced a judgment of death, for, he says, “Your own mouth has confessed that you have killed the Lord’s anointed” (II Sam. 1:16). Mariana the Jesuit, whom I have cited above, reckons this actual concurring in one’s own death as heavy as the act itself—as it seems, even though the party does not know it. After he decided how a heretical king might be poisoned, he was diligent in this prescription, “The king must not be constrained to take the poison himself, but some other way administer it to him. Therefore, it should be prepared and conveyed in some way other than meat or drink, because otherwise, either willingly or ignorantly, the king would kill himself.” Thus he provides that the king who must die under the sins of tyranny and heresy must still be defended from concurring in his own death, even ignorantly, as though this were a greater sin.