The City of God

A ...most noble example, they are forced to admit that the gods are not to be worshipped for the sake of the body's goods or the things that happen to a man from without, since he preferred to lack all these things rather than offend the gods by whom he swore. But what shall we do with men who boast that they have had such a citizen, but fear to have such a city? If they do not fear it, then let them admit that something like what happened to Regulus could happen to a city worshipping the gods just as diligently as he did, and let them not slander Christian times.

But because the question has arisen concerning those Christians who were also led away as captives, let those who impudently and imprudently mock the most salutary religion observe this and be silent: because if it was not a disgrace to their gods that their most attentive worshipper, while keeping faith in his oath to them, lacked a country, while he had no other, and, as a captive among enemies, was killed through a long death by the punishment of a new cruelty, then the Christian name is much less to be blamed in the captivity of its faithful, who, awaiting their heavenly fatherland with true faith, know themselves to be strangers even in their own homes.

Whether the virtue of the mind could be contaminated by the outrages which the captivity of holy virgins, perhaps, has suffered, without the assent of the will. Chap. XVI

They truly think they are hurling a great accusation against the Christians when, exaggerating their captivity, they add that outrages were also committed, not only against other marriages and virgins-to-be-wed, but also against certain religious women. Here, indeed, it is not faith, nor piety, nor the very virtue called chastity, but rather our own discussion that is hemmed in by certain constraints between shame and reason. And we do not care so much here to provide an answer to others as we do to provide consolation to our own. Let it be posited and confirmed, first of all, that the virtue by which one lives rightly commands the members of the body from the seat of the mind, and the body becomes holy through the use of a holy will. While this remains unshaken and stable, whatever another may do to or in the body, which cannot be avoided without personal sin, is beyond the guilt of the one who suffers it. B But because not only what pertains to pain but also what pertains to lust can be perpetrated in another's body, whatever such thing has been perpetrated, even if it does not shake the chastity kept with a most constant mind, nevertheless brings shame, lest it be believed that what was done with the mind’s will—which perhaps could not happen without some pleasure of the flesh—was actually willed. And for this reason, as for those who killed themselves to avoid suffering such things, what human affection would not want them to be forgiven? And as for those who did not want to kill themselves to avoid another's crime by committing their own, whoever gives them this as a crime will not himself be free from the crime of folly.

Of voluntary death out of fear of punishment or disgrace. Chap. XVII

For if it is not permitted to kill a man by private authority, even a guilty one, for whom no law grants the license to be killed, then surely he who kills himself is a homicide. And he becomes the more guilty when he has killed himself, the more innocent he was in the cause for which he thought he ought to be killed. For if we justly detest the act of Judas, and if truth judges him—when he hanged himself, he had increased rather than expiated the crime of that wicked betrayal, because, despairing of God's mercy, he repented destructively and left himself no room for salutary penance—how much more should he abstain from his own slaughter who has nothing in himself to punish with such a penalty? For Judas, when he killed himself, killed a wicked man; and yet he finished this life guilty not only of the death of Christ but also of his own, because, although it was on account of his own crime, he was killed by another crime.

Of another's violent lust which the mind endures in the oppressed body while alive. Chap. XVIII

But why should a man who has done no evil do evil to himself and, by killing himself, kill an innocent human being, lest he suffer another's wrongdoing? And why should he perpetrate his own sin in himself, lest another's be perpetrated in him? But perhaps it is feared that another's lust will pollute? It will not pollute if it is another's; if it does pollute, it will not be another's. But since chastity is a virtue of the mind and has fortitude as its companion, by which it decides to endure any evils whatsoever rather than consent to evil...