PART V
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
THE Fifth Commandment is, " Thou shalt not kill." [1]
The crime of homicide is primarily forbidden by this precept, but inasmuch as quarrelling, fighting, wounding, lead up to homicide, these and similar acts are secondarily forbidden. Implicitly, the precept prescribes the preservation of life, since death will follow if care be not taken to preserve life.
CHAPTER I
ON SUICIDE
i . SUICIDE, or the killing of one's self, when one's own death is the direct and immediate object of the will, is forbidden by the Fifth Commandment and is grievously sinful. It is the same when death is not the direct object of the will, if some act is done of which the only immediate effect is the destruction of one's own life; for in that case by willing the action I implicitly will the effect. And so if, out of bravado, I jumped from the top of the tower of Westminster Cathedral into the street below, I should be guilty of the grave sin of suicide, even though that was not my direct object.
The reason why suicide is unlawful is because we have not the free disposal of our own lives. God is the author of life and death, and he has reserved the ownership of human life to himself. We cannot leave the post where he has stationed us without his authority. Moreover, a man belongs to his country, and so suicide is a crime against the commonwealth, and as such is punished. There is a controversy among divines as to whether it would be lawful for a malefactor who had been condemned to death and entrusted by public authority with the execution of the sentence against himself to take his own life. Many hold that it would be lawful, for there seems no conclusive reason why the State might not appoint a man to be his own executioner.
- ↑ Exod. xx 13.
