praecedebat unde Abraham Amicus Dei deputatus si non de Aequitate Justitia Legis hujus Naturalis Out of these general descriptions of the Law of Nature I may spin out this Definition The Law of Nature is the universal Law of the World concerning some common necessities to which we are inclin'd by Nature invited by Consent prompted by Reason and bound upon us by the command of God and the first part of this Definition is strengthened and made evidently true by the aptnesses of the Heathen to Justice and disposition to Laws concreated with their understandings which are stil'd by the Schools Species congenitae concreatae and by Minsinger and Civil Law they are nam'd Praecepta seu formulae honestatis praeceptae signatures or draughts of moral honesty stamp'd upon the hearts of men in their first creation by God Himself which super-induce and imprint upon their Consciences such Fears and Opinions that pass upon mankind the obligation and reverence of Laws But as in the body of man there is great variety of Accidents and mutability of matter but still that variety is govern'd by the various flexures of Reason which remains unchang'd in all its revolutions and vicissitudes or if you will in all the complications and twistings about the collateral Accidents and is the same though working otherwise so it is in the Law whose Reason and Obligation continues even when it is made to comply with changing Instances Now God being the prime Law-giver can by his eternal Legislative power contract or inlarge this Law of Nature by Interpretation or Dispensation especially when the publick good of mankind is concerned as in the case of Cain's marriage with his Sister or when his Power Jurisdiction Dominion and Property is to be evidenced as in the case of the Israelites devesting and spoiling the Aegyptians of their Ear-rings or Thirdly when the Faith Obedience and Patience of good men is to be tried and exemplified as when he commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac but God say Divines will not it being inconsistent with his Justice absolutely root up and extinguish the Law of Nature because it is that Law by which he will arraign Pagans Infidels and Heathens at the last General Audit of the last day for then they shall receive their final doom and sentence not that they lived out of the Pale of Christianity or did not believe in Christ or the Christian Law for alas they never heard of either but because they did not live up to the Law of Nature and the light diffused from it or if you please up to that moral rectitude that was the result of both whose beams were sufficient to have made them shun the foul obliquities and irregular pollutions of human life Now the Law of Nature being thus stated cannot be dispensed with by any humane power whatsoever and this Cicero clearly saw by a Ray darted from it when he defin'd it to be Vera ratio naturae congruens diftusa in omnes constans sempiterna And my Assertion is fortified by these reasons the Laws of Nature being bound upon us by the Law of God cannot be dispenced withal unless by a power equal to the same or superior to that which made the sanction but that cannot be at all neither can they be dispenced with at all unless by God Himself Secondly whatsoever is forbidden by the Natural Law cannot be permitted by the Civil because when the Highest Power hath interposed then the inferior and subordinate hath no Authority for since it hath its Being from the superior it cannot be suppos'd it can prejudice that from whence it had all its Being Thirdly I argue from the difference between Divine and Humane Laws Divine Laws do originally and immediately oblige by their own prime Efficiency and Authority but Humane Laws bind the Conscience not intrinsecally formally and primarily from themselves but by Power Virtue and Efficacy transfus'd and deriv'd into them by the Divine Command by whose Efficiency they work obedience to themselves mediately and instrumentally Again Divine Laws bind the will and the understanding Humane Laws only the will which is the subject of Humane Laws Humane Laws only consider the outward action not the inward opinion you must obey man when at the same time without sin you may believe the Law to be imprudent imperfect or fit to be disannull'd because there was a weakness in the sanction they could not foresee the evil that was future the inconveniences of some men the impossibilities of many things and the intolerable burden and pressure upon sundry persons But in the Laws of God we must submit our most secret thoughts and we must be sure so to obey Humane Laws as we keep for God the Prerogative of his having unveil'd the Law of Nature as much as I could I come now to demonstrate that Self-Murther breaks up and dismantles those defensatives the Law of Nature has erected against it by making a bloody Onset or Invasion upon two prime Branches or Ingredients of it that is self-preservation and do as you would be done unto Now self-preservation is of universal extent and latitude and so wound up with the Law of Nature that it is made by Vlpian to be the Law itself for thus he defines it Jus naturale est says he quod natura omnia animalia docuit a natural right that Nature hath taught every creature and this is evident in the youngest creatures in whom though there be but slender principles of Life and faint evidences of a Being yet if you attempt to destroy them by drowning or any other engine of ruine with what strugling and reluctancy will they endeavour to decline their early and angry fate is notoriously obvious and if it hold good in these creatures that are guided only by such a glimmering principle of sense then should it be much more eminently manifest in man in whom God hath planted reason to check and controul the unruly and disordered passions of the soul and especially to repress those two imperious and insolent Tribunes of it the irascible and concupâ—scible appetite And this is evident from the practice of the most barbarous Nations who appoint subservient Officers and Executioners to inflict death upon Delinquents because they know that is abhorrent to all natural Instinct and destructive of the Law of Nature which obliges every man to preserve himself as long as possibly he can for Criminals and Malefactors to unsluce their lives by laying violet hands upon themselves I come now to assert that Self-Homicide overturns and breaks down that other prime principle of the Law of Nature do as you would be done unto which is the great Conservatory of commutative Justice which is the great Ligament that fastens and ties together all Humane Society and without which they would become as wild and sanguinary as an herd of Wolves or Tigers Now if it be a breach of Justice to strike my neighbour it is a
greater violation to kill him and if it be so signal an impiety to take away his life maliciously and by propensed deliberation it is certainly a crime of vaster magnitude for a man by self-murther to take away his own only upon this consideration that every person is next neighbour to himself And this method of arguing is conformable to the pages of sacred Writ which prescribe that every man should love his neighbour as himself Now if Self-murther were in any case formally and intrinsecally lawful God would not have had the love of every man to Himself the great Original by which he was to copy out his love to his neighbour for he knew that if he were uncharitable to himself he would be much more to him for malice in the heart commonly becomes murder in the hand And to declare what a ruinous inroad Self-murder makes upon the Law of Nature and moral Justice several Nations in Ages of an elder Inscription to declare their detestation of a Fact whose malignity was improv'd and enhans'd by so much unnaturalness decreed that the bodies of those who had deprived themselves of life by an injurious violence should be drag'd through the execrable Gates of Cities by Antiquity stil'd Portae Sceleratae and then be interred in some obscure pits or caverns called Puticuli and in other places to disgrace this Fact and make it more exemplary Criminal they hung the bodies up of Self-murderers The Canon and Civil Law denies the Rites of Christian Sepulture to self-Homicides unless it be in these three Cases that is if this self-destruction be acted by persons upon whom is super-induc'd stupefaction by Meagrims Palsies Epilepsies Apoplexies the like Secondly by those whose judgment is clowded by the fogs and exhalations of a setled and deep rooted Melancholy which frequently determines in madness Thirdly if it be performed by persons that are assaulted by violent Fevers as Calentures and the like which are usually accompanied with a Phrensy and to such persons as these upon just and evident proof of their distemper they do not deny the Obsequies of Christian Funeral For in all deliberate sins before they can come to their perfection the Casuists affirm to be six steps or gradations the inclination of the will is the first sin oftentimes enters in at that door but of it self it only is a capacity readiness and disposition and no act but if these become facilities and promptitudes to sin they are not innocent The first beginning of sin is when the will stops and rests it self upon the tempting object and consents so far that it will have it considered and disputed when the will is gone so far it is past beyond what is natural and comes so far towards choice and guiltiness that it is yet no more a friend to virtue than to vice and knows not which to chuse The third step the will makes is when it is pleased with the thought and meditation of the sin and this precedent relish may be called the Antepast of the action The fourth step of the will beyond the white lines of innocence is a desire to do the action not clearly and distinctly but under a conditional notion if it were lawful or convenient The fifth gradation is when this obstacle is removed and the heart consents to the sin and then there remains nothing but that it be contriv'd within And then the sixth step is when it is committed to the faculties and members to go about their new and unhappy employment and then both the inward and outward man have combin'd and made up the body of a sin Now all these steps being the results of deliberation and debate or of consent and choice an understanding benighted with melancholy distempers or a will distorted with a Phrensy cannot be capable of so that a musled and darkned understanding and an irregular will acting by the hand do their own preposterous work by a misguided instrument so that although Physically and Naturally they are several actions because Elicite and acted by several faculties yet morally they are but one for what the hand acts or eye sees is neither good nor evil but is made so by the understanding or will But I now proceed My second Argument against Self-Homicide is that it destroys those obligations of Fidelity and Allegiance due to that Power under which we live and if it be acted by a Wife Son or Daughter then it subverts â—double subjection that that relates to a Prince or Common-wealth and that that is due to the injunctions of a Husband and a Father But then again if it be performed by a Father or a Mother that is a Widow they violate that interest their children challenge in them to whom they are to contribute support and maintenance instruction and education that so by manuring and cultivating their minds they may improve their knowledg in Arts either speculative or practical by which they may acquire a future subsistence Thirdly sin is defin'd by the Schools to be Actus devians ab ordine debiti finis contra regulam naturae aut Legis Aeternae Now they that lay violent hands upon themselves destroy the order and end of their Creation which is to exercise all the Virtues both Moral and Theological through the whole decursion of their lives whose progressive growth and improvement is by this Bloody Act wholly fore-laid and intercepted Fourthly Self-Murther invades the power of the Magistrate for if particular persons have no power over their own lives collectively considered they can have none neither since general Assemblies and Conventions are made up of particular persons and are like a Pillar from whence if you substract the several stones that compos'd it the notion and appellation of a Pillar ceases Now if Self-killing were lawful the power of life and death immediately invested by God in the supream Magistrate would by degrees shrink to a despicable nothing Now that the Magistrate may legally punish criminal offenders is clear from these reasons that some sorts of Criminals should be put to death is so necessary that if it were not done it would be directly and immediately a great uncharitableness and the Magistrate should even in this particular be more uncharitable than he can suppose to be in putting Delinquents to death for an High-way Thief and Murderer if he be permitted does cut off many persons who little think of death and such as are innocent as to the Common-wealth are yet very guilty before God for whose souls and the space of whose repentance there is but very ill provision made if they may live who shall send so many to Hell by murdering such persons who did not watch and stand in readiness against the day of their sad Arrest if all such Assassinates were to be free from punishment the Common-wealth would be no society of Peace but a direct state of War a State destructive of all Government But if there were any punishment less than death the
SELF-HOMICIDE-MURTHER OR SOME ANTIDOTES AND ARGUMENTS Gleaned out of the TREASURIES Of Our MODERN CASUISTS AND DIVINES Against that Horrid and Reigning Sin of Self-Murther By T. P. Esq M. A. And formerly of Clare-Hall in Cambridge LONDON Printed by W. Downing for Edward Thomas at the Adam and Eve in Little-Brittain 1674. THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO HIS Worthy and Learned Friend John Upton of Newington-Hall in the County of Middlesex Esq one of the Commissioners of His Majesties Customs Worshipful Sir THE Scene of those Tragedies which have been lately Acted by some misguided persons upon themselves hath been so publickly laid that it hath been obvious to many eyes and the sad report hath accosted and arriv'd at more ears but whether they may entitle their Original Extraction to a Learned but unfortunate Treatise stil'd Biathanatos wherein Self-killing in several Cases is concluded not to be Murder I cannot positively determine However I have collected all the Antidotes I could meet with out of the Laboratories of Modern Casuists to countermine and dissipate the venome of those Arguments that are knit together to support this sanguinary Assertion But Sir I know you have so much Art to judge and Candor to believe that when I compos'd this Treatise I wholly design'd to offer it up to the scrutiny of clearer speculations than mine own amongst the Masters of which I know none a more Adaequate Arbiter or Competent Judge to winnow it than your self from whose Charity I may hope that which I could not expect from the Press that is the pardon of those mistakes of which possibly he may be guilty of who is SIR Your Most Humble and Affectionate Servant THOMAS PHILIPOT To the READER Courteous Reader HOW far an offending Criminal may be his own Executioner hath puzled the Heads and disquieted the Pens of our modern Casuists but at last the most Learned of them have fix'd upon this determination That in some judicial Censures and Sentences that are not sanguinary that is do not reach to the effusion of Blood and where no Action is immediately to be performed by the offender upon himself he is by a passive surrender and submission of himself to the Law to be his own Executioner And there is no more indecency they say in the self-infliction of these Medicinal punishments than there is for a man to mingle his own severe and disgustful Potions to let himself Blood or launce a corroding Vlcer the cases wherein the Delinquent is to verifie the Sentence of the Law by executing it upon himself are these that follow If the Law imposes a Penalty ipso facto to be incurr'd if it be equal moderate and tolerable the Conscience is obliged to submit to a voluntary susception of it so if a person be blasted with the censure of Excommunication he is not only engaged to submit to those separations estrangements or alienations from Society and avoidings which he finds from the duty of others but if he be in a stranger place where they know not of it and begin Divine Service he is bound in Conscience to go away to resign and Ecclesiastical Benefice if he be possessed of one and other things of the same necessity for verification of the sentence As if a Benefice should be offered to the excommunicate person he is obliged not to accept of it being by the sentence rendred irregular or to execute any other Office to which by that censure he is declared and made unapt and inhabile and the reason is because every act of Communion and office in his Case is a direct rebelling against the sentence of the Law the verification of which depends as much upon himself as upon others for every such person is like a man that has the Plague upon him all men that know it avoid him but because all men do not know it he is bound to decline them and in no case to run into their company whether they know him or know him not If a Law be enacted that if a Clerk within twelve moneths after the Collation of a Parish-Church be not Ordained a Priest he shall forfeit his Ecclesiastical Benefice if he does not submit to the Sentence and recede from his Parish or Incumbency he is tied in Conscience to make Restitution of all the Profits he shall receive or consume So if a Law be Constituted that who-ever is a common Swearer shall ipso facto be infamous he that is guilty is oblig'd in Conscience not to give testimony in a Cause in Law but to be his own Judge and Executioner of that Sentence But whether these precedents do intrinsecally and ex natura rei oblige the Consciences of all persons and universally in all times and in all places I leave to thy scrutinie and justice at once both to judge and determine and so I proceed Self-Homicide-Murther THE Law of Nature is nothing but the Law of God given to mankind for the conservation of his Nature and promotion of his perfective end A Law of which a man sees a reason and feels a necessity God is the Law-giver practical Reason or Conscience is the Record but revelation and express declaring of it was the first publication and evidence of it until then it had not all the solemnities of a Law though it was pass'd in the Court and Decreed and Recorded God is the Author of our Nature and made a Law fit for it by his own Authority and proper Sanction and sent the principles of that Law together with it not that whatsoever is in Nature or Reason is therefore a Law because it is reasonable or because it is natural but that God took so much of prime Reason as would make us good and happy and establish'd it into a Law which became and was stil'd the Law of Nature both because this Law is in Materia Naturali that is concerning the good which refers to the prime necessities of Nature and also because being Divine in respect of the Author the principles of this Law are natural in respect of the time of their Institution being together with our nature though they were drawn out by God severally in several periods of the World who made them Laws actually by his command which in nature were only so by disposition By this Law the Patriarchs lived by this Noah was declared just and Abraham was the Friend of God for this though not written in Tables of stone was yet written in the Tables of their hearts that is it was by God so imprinted in their Consciences that by it they were sufficiently instructed how to walk and please God And this is the sense of Tertullian whose determination as to this particular is often cited by our Modern Casuists his words are these Ante Legem Moysi scriptam in Tabulis lapideis Legem contendo non scriptam quae Naturaliter intelligebatur à Patribus custodiebatur nam unde Noe justus inventus est si non illum Naturalis Legis Justitia
Circumstances of performance Therefore whatever good thing they intend let them do it when they can when it is pleasant profitable honest or convenient but let them alwaies as much as they can reserve their liberty To summ up all the Casuists generally advise where persons are apt to be benighted with an erroneous Conscience or stung and afflicted with a scrupulous one before they embrace or give themselves up to any opinion they should entertain it under these Notions and Qualifications 1. That it be that which advances most the Glory of God the Reputation of his Name and is most agreeing with his Attributes Secondly that which is most agreeable with the Letter of Scripture and complies most practically with the purpose and design of it Thirdly that which Prudent Pious and Just Men have first asserted and then practised and whole Nations have approved Fourthly that which is agreeable to common Life Fifthly that which is best for the publick Sixthly that which is more Holy Seventhly that which gives least confidence to sin or sinners Eighthly that which is most charitable to others Ninthly that which gives least offence and scandal And Tenthly and Lastly in destitution of all things else that which primarily is most useful to the publick and secondarily to our selves in the Conduct of Humane Life He that admits an opinion without these salutary cautions may possibly suffer it so long without disturbance to dwell in his Conscience until at length it become a Native which should have been suddenly dislodged and turned out as an intruding destructive Inmate and then like an ingrateful Serpent having warm'd its venome in his bosome it will at last destroy him Since then Self-killing is opposite to the Eternal Law of God of which the Law of Nature is but a Transcript repugnant to the Law of Reason and declared unlawful by a Superfaetation of positive Laws both Canon and Civil if acted by deliberation choice and consent and fortified by the concurrent usage of elder Nations who customarily threw some Character of Disgrace and Obloquie upon the bodies of those who had wilfully destroyed themselves I may justly wind up this Discourse in this Determination That Self-Homicide is wilful Murder The POSTSCRIPT WHereas in that elaborate unhappy Treatises stil'd Biathanathos there is exhibited a Copious Register of some Elder and Braver Romans who embezeld their Lives by an Imprudent and Extra-Judicial-Violence offered to themselves as namely Cato Uticensis a man that durst be severely honest in a loose and licentious Age and Brutus his Son in Law that great Exemplar of a Virtuous Life of whom it may be said so far as it relates to the Guidance and Conduct of a Practical Morality that he saw more at the Noon of Night than many do at the Noon of Day and others of a less Estimate and Repute who out of Animosity Regret and Passion by an unnatural and injurious Violation demolished the Prison of their Bodies and so Enfranchis'd and Releâ—s'd their Souls from the Natural Restraints and Confinements of their Flesh. But to this I Answer that these Tragedies and Bloody Impressions perform'd by these Persons upon themselves were not the Legal Results of Common Natural Instinct or the Vniform and Regular Products of the Law of Nature But rather the prodigious Issue and mishappen Births of those three Furies Impatience Emulation and Ambition which in elder Times not only lash'd the wisest Romans into those Excesses and wild Exorbitancies Posteritie hath since generally concluded them Guilty of But likewise at the last precipitated the Common-wealth of Rome it self into a final Ruin and Extinction And this was well observed by Julian Sirnamed the Apostate who in his last Scene of Life and Agony of Death concluded and Expir'd with this Rational Expression as it is Recorded by that Judicious Historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the Description of his Life Aequo enim Judicio says the Dying Emperour as he Relates it Timidus est ac Ignavus qui cum non oportet Mori Desiderat qui Refugiat cum sit opportunum Now this Evil Principle of Self-Homicide had possibly shed a Malignant Operation and Influence upon some of the Greeks which discover'd it self in some unnatural Violences Acted upon themselves which mov'd and incited Aristotle not to allow it to be so much as Brave and Magnanimous for a Man to Kill himself for the avoiding any evil for thus in the Third and Fifth Book of his Ethicks he determines to Die that we may avoid Povertie The Torments of Love or any evil Affliction is not the part of a valiant Man but of a Coward And that the Grecians generally did abominate this Fact of Self-Killing is evident from the example of the Milesians who to cast some signal Obloquie upon the memory of those Virgins that hang'd themselves expos'd their Bodies to be a publick Spectacle And Strabo informs us that the Indian Priests and Wise men blam'd the Fact of Calanus and that they resented with Regret and Hatred the hasty Deaths of Proud and Impatient Persons and this made Aristotle in his Ethicks to aver that they that kill themselves hastning their own Deaths before the publick command enjoyns them are injurious to the Common-wealth from whose service and profit they substract themselves if they be Innocent and if they be Criminal they withdraw themselves from her Justice And therefore certainly it was an Heroick Determination of dying King Darius when he was mortally wounded by Bessus and his Barbarious Complices in that Assasination as his Tragedy is Pathetecally Related by Q. Curtius Alieno mori malo scelere quam meo I had rather dye by another mans Impiety than my own I shall wind up this Postscript in that excellent Assertion of St. Austin Magis enim mens Infirma deprehenditur quae ferre non potest duram Corporis sui Sanitatem aut stultam vulgi Opinionem It is not greatness but littleness of Spirit it is Impatience or Pride that makes a man Kill himself to avoid trouble and disquiet to his Body or dishonour to his Name amongst Fools FINIS An Advertisement ☞ DOctor Sermons most Famous and Safe Cathartique Diuretique Pills wherwith was Cured the late Lord General Monck of the Dropsie in June and July 1669 many hundreds before since having received absolute Cure thereby which beyond all universal Pills are very well known to be the most certain Purging Remedy ever yet invented against the Dropsie and Scurvy with all other sharp salt and watry Humors they purifie the Blood help the Kings-Evil and causeth all old Ulcers Cancers and spreading Sores the sooner to be made whole And often by Experience have been found to expel all those poisonous Humors caused by taking Mercurial Medicines too many now abroad and the people so much deceived thereby that they have been almost ready to perish before that they would be perswaded to make use of these effectual Pills which are really prepared for the benefit of those that are troubled with the forementioned Diseases c. Sold by the Author at the two Black Posts in East-Harding-street near the Sign of Goldsmiths-hall between Fetter-lane Shoo-lane London and by Edward Thomas at the Adam Eve in Little-Britain who is solely deputed under the Doctor 's Hand and Seal to make sale thereof and he to appoint others to sell them not only in the City of London but in all other Cities and Towns that he shall think fit throughout the whole Kingdom and in the Cities of Edinborough in the Kingdom of Scotland and Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland ☞ And that no more may be deceived by buying of other Pills for Doctor Sermons Take notice that his are gilt with Gold and sealed up with his own Seal in wooden boxes The numbers and prices are as followeth and no other waies The least Box containing 20 Pills sold for 4 s. The middle Box containing 40 Pills sold for 8 s. The large Box containing 60 Pills sold for 12 s. And with every Box is delivered a printed Book of Directions with the Author's Name at length in the Title-Page Without which Book you may question whether the Pills are right or not