John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (49 page)

We may come close but not properly to the nature of it by the second way of advice, so that after discourse we may advisedly choose one of these roles and refuse the others, for whoever can be willing can also be unwilling. So we may wish for ourselves what is naturally evil (I mean the evil of punishment); the hermit monk, according to Sulpicius Severus, by earnest prayer obtained from God permission to be possessed by the devil for certain months, because he found in himself an inclination to pride and security.

Certainly in some cases we may without sinning wish for death, and not only for enjoying the sight of God—so says a holy man, “For a vision of God, we long a thousand times to consign our body to death”—but also to be delivered from the encumbrances of this life. So the act can have good reasons, as Peter Martyr argues, and then says, “To refuse the better deed is corruption of the first condition.” Thus we may wish for death, even though it is so far from being lawful to wish anything that “It is sin to wish that anything naturally evil were not evil, so that we might then wish it when it was discharged of that natural evilness.” Death itself, therefore, is not evil, nor is it evil to wish for it. Is it then evil to further with more actual help that which we may lawfully wish to be done?

The two extreme religions that seem to degrade secular magistracy by subjecting monarchs either to a bishop or to a consistory willingly accept this saying, “Curse not the king, no not in your heart” (Eccl. 10:20); that is, do not wish him ill. Nor, as I observe, have the authors of either persuasion allowed in their books that the subject might wish the death of the prince except in cases where he might contribute his actual help. For both Papists and Puritans teach that a lawful king may become a tyrant, which in my understanding cannot consist with the form and right of hereditary monarchy. Still, Saravia, who pretends to go the middle way—in this case, truly the royal way—says, “We as well as the Romanists deem a king of another religion to be a tyrant” and, “It is impossible to make one a king without his being a tyrant in the opinion of one side or the other.” As for his own opinion, he writes, “No man can be bound by an oath of fidelity to the pope, because he is not indeed the vicar of God as he presumed and swore himself to be.”

Conformably with this view, that book whose title and scope is the foundation of matters of state in France (and, it pretends, in all Christendom),
Declaration et Protestation des Doctes de France
, after it has enraged subjects against tyrants and comes to declare what a tyrant is, exemplifies it in the king of Spain, and with reasons that cast whatever malignity the author is equal to upon whatever prince he chooses.

Last, whoever will compare carefully Beccaria’s book with Beza’s (if that other book is Beza’s) will see that, although they differ diametrically in many things, still from their collision and beating together there arise abundantly the sparks of this pestilent doctrine, that as tranquility once was so religion now is the reason we admit kings and also the reason why they are not kings when they neglect religion. From these doctrines, I say, it is inferred by Carbone that “It is lawful to wish the death of a tyrant or of a favorer of heretics, even though he dies in mortal sin.” To wish and to do so are naturally the same fault. Still, although it is “A sin to offer myself to martyrdom simply out of the weariness of life,” according to Mazzolini, or according to Navarrus “To wish death simply out of impatience, anger, shame, poverty, or misfortune”—even to wish for heaven simply for my own happiness—nevertheless, Saint Paul certainly had some permissible reasons to desire to be released and to be with Christ.

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.

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.