John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (56 page)

But since this is the only place in all the scriptures where those who offer or desirously admit violence to their own bodies are said to have done it by the express motion of God, I gather that it is not without some boldness that others affirm, without the authority of the text, that the death of Samson and others had the same foundation, for it appears by this that when God would have it thus understood he is pleased to speak it plainly and expressly.

3.—Before we come to those who actually killed themselves, the next is Jonah 1:12. By frequently wishing his own death and moving the mariners to cast him into the sea, Jonah made many steps toward the very act. I know that it is everywhere said that these words, “Take me and cast me into the sea,” proceeded from a prophetic spirit. Saint Jerome says, “In this prophetic spirit he foresaw that the Ninevites would repent, and so his preaching would be discredited.” But if this is so, must he not also in the same prophetic spirit see that their repentance must be occasioned by his going there and preaching? If this request for his own destruction—they were then innocent in their understanding, for they prayed, “Lay not innocent blood upon us” (Jonah 1:14)—was by divine motion, shall we dare also to impute to similar motions and spirit his angry importuning of death? “Take, I beseech you, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:3). Then, after he wished in his heart to die, he added, “I do well to be angry unto the death” (Jonah 4:9).

Saint Jerome calls him “Saint Jonah.” When Nicholas of Lyra observes that Jerome had not done so to any of the other prophets, he concludes that this testimony was most needed by Jonah, who by his many reluctances against God’s will might otherwise fall into some suspicion of eternal perishing. We must be far from fearing such a fate in so eminent and exemplary a type of Christ. But we have no ground to admit any particular inspiration of God’s spirit, since Jerome and Nicholas of Lyra pronounce him holy, despite all of these reluctances. Thus we may esteem him advised, ordinate, and rectified in all these approaches that he made by wishing for and consenting to his own death.

4.—Samson is the first of those whom the scriptures register to have killed themselves. The man is so exemplary! The times before him prophesied him, for of him it is said, “Dan shall judge his people” (Gen. 49:16). The times after him regarded him more consummately in Christ, of whom he was a figure. Even in his own times other nations seem to have had a type or copy of him in Hercules. His act of self-killing is celebrated by the church to everlasting memory as the act of a martyr, and by very many others in their homilies and expositions. The renowned Paulinus says, “God send me the death of Samson and Samson’s blindness, that I may live to God and look to God.”

This general applause and concurrence in praising the act has made many, being loath either to depart from their opinion who extol him or to admit anything that may countenance that manner of dying, think (or at least write) that he did not intend to kill himself. Two very learned men, Francisco de Vitoria and Gregorio de Valencia, labor to seem to be of this persuasion. Beside the fact that exposing himself thus to inevitable danger is the same fault as self-homicide, when there is any fault in it, the text itself is against them. For Samson died with these words in his mouth, “Let me lose my life with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30).

These authors sometimes add that he intended his own death not principally but only accidentally. (Calvin also says that Saint Paul did not desire death for death’s sake but to be with Christ.) This, however, can remove no man from our side of the argument, for we say the same, that this may be done only when the honor of God may be promoted in that way and no other.

Therefore, to justify Samson’s act, Saint Augustine, equally zealous of Samson’s honor and of his own conscience, still builds on his old foundation, “This was by special inspiration from God.” Because it does not appear in the story explicitly or implicitly, this may be refuted as easily as it is presented. To give strength to this opinion of Augustine, our countryman Sayer presents one reason preceding the act. Pedraza the Spaniard gives another reason subsequent to the act. The first is that he prepared himself for it by prayer. But in this prayer you may observe much humanity, weakness, and self-regard. “O Lord,” says he, “I beseech you, strengthen me alone at this time, that I may be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). The second reason is that, because he effected what he desired, it is to be presumed that to the end for which he asked it God restored his strength to him.

In the text it appears that already his hair had begun to grow out again, and thus his strength was somewhat renewed. But does this prove any impulse, incitement, and prevenience of the holy God to that particular act, or rather only a habitual accompanying and awakening of him to such actions by which God might be honored and glorified, whenever an occasion was presented? Therefore, when he felt his strength in part refreshed and had by prayer entreated the perfecting of it, seeing that they took continual occasion from his dejection to scorn and reproach his God, Samson turned with an equal fervor to revenge their offense against him and God, and to remove the wretched occasion of it.

A very subtle author, Georgius, says Samson had the same reason to kill himself that he had to kill them, the same authority, the same privilege, and the same safeguard from sin. He died, the same man says, with the same zeal as Christ, unconstrained. Writes Pereira, “In this manner of dying, as much as in anything else, he was a type of Christ.”

5. The next example is Saul. Whether he performed and consummated the act of killing himself or the Amalekite contributed his help makes no difference to our purpose. That the latter was true may consist well enough with the first telling of the story in I Samuel 31, and it appears to be the more likely and probable in the second telling in II Samuel I. By Josephus it is absolutely so declared. Peter Comestor’s
Scholastic History
also says that Saul was too weak to force the sword through his body.

Two things used to be disputed about Saul—whether or not he was saved and whether if he perished it was for impenitence either testified or presumed by this act of his. The Jews are generally indulgent toward him. The Christians are generally severe for the reason that it is said of him, “Saul died for his transgressions against the Lord and his word and for asking counsel of a witch” (I Chron. 10:13). This does not necessarily indicate an impenitence or a second death of damnation. For the Jews say that he, believing the sentence of Samuel (I Sam 28:16) in the apparitions and accepting that decree as from God, repented his former life, and then presented and delivered up himself and his sons, conformably to the revealed will of God, there in the field to be sacrificed to him. That is to understand Samuel’s words, “You shall be with me,” to be spoken not generally of the state of the dead but of the state of the just, because both Samuel himself was just and so was Jonathan, whose condition in this promise of being with Samuel was the same as his father’s.

Nicholas of Lyra says, “All Jews and some Christians agree that, lest by his reproach dishonor might redound upon God, a good and zealous man may kill himself, as Samson and the virgins did.” He adds, “If other reasons were not sufficient to excuse Saul, it also might justly be applied to him that he did it by divine inspiration.” From these statements I observe two things. First, Nicholas presumes there are other reasons that are sufficient in some cases, whether or not they were there in Saul’s case. Second, there is the reason for which Nicholas presumes that Saul died well, “Because the contrary is not declared in scriptures nor determined by the church.”

Saul, indeed, has a good testimony of sanctity in this act from Malloni: “As Christ died when he would, so did Saul, thinking it dishonorable to die by the hand of his and God’s enemies.” The argument that Paul of Burgos makes to the contrary suffers more force and violence in being brought in than it gives strength to his opinion; it is, “If the act were justifiable in Saul, it would have been so too in the Amalekite, if his profession to David was true that he had killed Saul, and consequently David was unjust in that execution.” Besides that, the Amalekite had no consciousness or inward knowledge of Saul’s just reasons, nor any other warrant except his commandment. It might have, and to him seemed likely to have, proceeded from Saul’s infirmities, and it might well appear to David from the Amalekite’s coming to tell him the news that he had human concerns in doing it and a purpose only to deserve well of David. When both judge and prisoner are innocent, often the executioner may be a murderer.

Such human concerns as weariness, despair, shame, fear, fidelity to his master, amazement, and so forth, stand in the way between Saul’s armor-bearer and all the excuses in our understandings. Although the phrase of scripture imputes nothing to him for the fact that he killed himself, still I have found nobody who offers any particular excuse in his defense.

6.—Neither do I find anything to excuse Ahitophel’s death (II Sam. 17:23), although, as I said of the other one, the story does not condemn that particular act. The text calls his counsel good, and it seems that he was not transported with passion, because he set his house in order, and he was buried in his father’s grave when Absalom, slain by another’s hand, was cast into a pit (II Sam. 18:14-17). But if he did it over a mere dispute of his own disgrace, or from fear of failure, or out of any self- concern, without advancing God’s glory, and he did not repent, then he perished.

7.—The usual (though not universal) opinion of Judas, the most sinful instrument of the most merciful work, is that he killed himself, but whether or not by hanging is more debated.

From the words in Acts 1:18, “He threw himself down headlong and burst asunder, and his bowels gushed out,” Euthymius thinks that while he hanged he was rescued and carried away, and that afterwards he killed himself by throwing himself headlong. Brenz leaves it neutral for us to think what we will. Oecumenius says that he did not only outlive this hanging but also grew to so enormous a size and became such a burden to himself that he was not able to get himself out of a coach’s way and so had his guts crushed out. Oecumenius got this from Papias, the disciple of Saint John, whose times cannot be thought ignorant or incurious of Judas’s story. There it is further told that others said Judas, being swollen to that vastness and corrupted with vermin, laid himself down in his field, and there his guts broke out. This version Theophylact follows.

It happens very often that some particular Father, of strong reputation and authority in his own time, snatches and swallows some probable interpretation of scripture. Then he digests it into his homilies, applies it in exhortations and encouragements as the diseases of his audience or his age require, imagines in it delightful and figurative insinuations, and sets it to the music of his style. In fact, every man who is accustomed to these meditations will often find in himself such a spiritual wantonness and devout straying into such delicacies. Then the sense that was only probable grows to be necessary, and those who follow that Father would rather enjoy his wit than exercise their own, just as we are often loath to change or remove a counterfeit gem by reason of its fine setting. In this way, I think, it became so widely believed that the fruit Eve ate was an apple, that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, that Absalom was hanged by the hair of the head, that Jephthah killed his daughter, and many others that grew current not from evidence in the text but because such an interpretation was most useful and applicable.

Judas’s case may well belong to this number. If not, still the act of killing himself is not added to his faults in any scriptural text, not even in those two Psalms (69, 109) that are commonly taken to be prophetically intended and directed as particular accusations against him.

Origen dared to hope even for this man (whose sin exceeded mercy if any ever did so), not out of Origen’s erroneous compassion and sinful charity by which he thinks that even the devil will be saved, but by virtue of Judas’s repentance. He says, “The devil led him to the sin and then induced in him the sorrowfulness that swallowed him.” But speaking of Judas’s repentance, he says, “Those words, ‘when Judas saw that he was condemned’ (Matt. 27:3), apply to Judas himself, for Christ was not yet condemned. From this consciousness and consideration began his repentance.” Origen also says, “It may be that Satan, who had entered into him, stayed with him until Christ was betrayed and then left him, and thereafter repentance followed. Perhaps,” Origen goes on, “he went to precede and go before his master, who was to die, and to meet him with his naked soul, so he might gain mercy by his confession and prayers.”

Although Calvin’s purpose is to enervate and maim (or at least to declare defective) the repentance that is admitted as sufficient by the Roman Church, he says that “in Judas there was perfect contrition of heart, confession by the mouth, and satisfaction for the money.” But Petilianus, against whom Saint Augustine wrote, proceeded further than any in justifying Judas’s last act. He said, “In suffering death when he repented, and thus was a confessor, he became a martyr.” This opinion, pronounced singularly and indefensibly, Saint Augustine answers just as cholerically, “He left to such a noose” [i e., Judas left a noose for the likes of Petilianus]. Even so, Saint Augustine himself confesses that an innocent man would have sinned more in such an act than Judas did, because in his execution there were some degrees of justice.

I intended not to speak of his actual impenitence or of his repentance, but only to observe to you that this last act is not imputed to him, nor is repentance said to be precluded by it.

8. Nobody denies the passive action of Eleazar, but they hold that the endangering of himself was an act of virtue. Still it was a forsaking and exposing of himself to certain destruction (I Macc. 6:43-46). For every elephant had thirty-two men on him and was guarded by 1,000 foot- soldiers and 500 horsemen; the elephant he slew was in his opinion the king’s and therefore the better provided. Even if prior to killing the elephant he hoped to escape, his creeping under it was a direct killing of himself, as expressly as Samson’s pulling down the house. The reasons for this action are rendered in the text to have been to deliver his people and to earn a perpetual name.