lose it; but be treated with the scorn and ill usage they governed others with: for no man who hath gained his honours honestly, and used them moderately and well, but will find respect and safety when he lays them down and shame and infamy and danger belong only to shameful, infamous, and injurious practices: they who have done no evil will be afraid of none. Do but live in the credit and esteem that virtuous honest practices will give, and you will never fly to death to deliver you from disgrace and infamy, from men's reproaches and despiteful usage.

I do not however affirm, that in all resolutions of the bad kind we are speaking to, some vicious passion is at the bottom: but in general, it is, I believe, so: they may proceed also from great weakness of mind, false principles, and from mistakes in religion; which though they are not sins, yet produce most sad effects, and are only to be prevented by thinking as well of God as they do of any good man they know. Nor have I taken any pains to show how little any of these causes or occasions can justify or excuse the sad effects of them: for having showed you, I hope, before, that this practice was forbidden of God, and consequently sinful, I had no need to prove that nothing can excuse a downright sin; but rather warn you to avoid those dangerous paths that have, we think, led others to destruction: for he who does not look to the temptation and the snare shall in vain resolve against the sin and danger to which they lead.

THREE SERMONS ON SELF-MURDER.

SERMON III.

2 SAMUEL XVII. 23.

And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to. his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father. HAVING already (in considering these words) spoken, in the first place, to the disastrous end Ahithophel came to, namely, that he hanged himself, and died, and showed how unlawful an act that was in him, and would be so in any one besides; and, in the second, to the occasion of it, namely, because he saw his counsel was not followed; and shown from thence, that it is evermore some naughty passion at the bottom, meeting some disappointment, that irritates the mind to such unreasonable and desperate resolutions, of which we ought to take great care; I am now to go on, and consider, thirdly, that which was previous to this fact; he arose, gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order: and, lastly, what followed, he was buried with his father.

In the third place, then, he arose, gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order. He could not long endure that place and company where the scene of his disgrace lay (as he thought) especially: and yet, if he had reasoned right, he had found that the longer he had tarried there the more he had been respected, the more destructive and unreasonable his rival's advice had appeared, and every hour had discovered how wise and necessary his own was at that juncture; and he had seen Hushai either slighted as a weak coun

sellor, or suspected as a treacherous one, and himself again the oracle. But to be second is, it seems, with statesmen, to be nobody; his rage and ambition would not let him consider, nor wait for an event that would justify his wisdom and foresight to Absalom and all the hasty council of war. But this was not all; his wise counsel was not only defeated, but that defeat, he saw, would prove the utter ruin of Absalom and all his party so that Ahithophel's fear would no more permit him to stay in the camp secure, than his ambition would let him sit in the council-chamber contented. Upon these principles, he arose, gat him home to his house, and set his household in order. In which words there is nothing observable, but that he acted very deliberately: had he been warned of God that he should shortly die, as king Hezekiah was, he could have done no more nor otherwise than he here did: he would have risen, and hasted home, and have set his house in order.

Here is one man in the world, at least, that seems to have destroyed himself with deliberation, and without any visible marks of distraction. This thing, we know, seldom or never happens in our own country: here, every one is downright mad that makes away himself by any manner of means; he could not, else, act so against the principles of self-preservation, the laws of nature, revelation, his own interest and honour. These are the arguments our pity rather than our reason makes upon these sad occasions, and pity rather to the living than the dead. And should the laws of the land take no cognizance of these violences, should such a death have no consequence with respect to the temporal estate of the surviving relations, ten people, I believe, to one, now, would be found to be self-murderers, and the public judgment would (were there to be one made) be much the same with that of private people.

Is it not manifest, in all cases besides this one, that people can and do deliberately do themselves the greatest mischiefs, without any manner of suspicion of having lost their reason and senses, as those words are in this case understood to signify? Do not men daily venture to provoke God's vengeance, by the most daring impieties, with as much understanding and sobriety as they show in any other faultless

action of their lives? do they not venture liberty and life by a thousand villanies, which they commit against each other, every day, by a malice most prepense and serious, and with most studied artifice, although they know that, if discovered, they shall surely pay down their heads for what they do? do not men, by riots and excess of every kind, hazard their health and life almost every day they live, although they see the mischief that will follow unavoidably, not at a distance, but in view before them? is man so wise and so considerate a creature, that he will not knowingly and resolutely defy the justice of God and man, and all the effects of vice and wickedness, and most audaciously hazard soul and body, health and reputation, both in this world and that to come? and do we say, these people are distracted, and excuse them by loss of reason and understanding? I am not saying hereby that selfmurderers are no more mad than all these other desperately wicked people are; but I say, that to conclude a self-murderer is therefore mad because he acts so like a madman, against nature, reason, religion, and self-preservation, is not a right way of concluding; because, by the same rule, all the enormously wicked ones of the world might be judged mad with as much reason as the others, since, doubtless, they act as much against all principles of reason and self-security as they. And yet the world does not conclude these wicked people mad; they think it is not quite so well with them: their reason, sense, and understanding make them accountable to God and man, and will most certainly condemn them.

The people who truly want their sense and understanding do indeed often fall into mischief, and often do great violence to themselves; but, generally speaking, they seek not mischief as their end, but fall into it accidentally, as blind men do into a pit: they do not make it their design, nor pitch upon the means that are most sure and proper to effect such purpose; one may commonly see some notable failure in their projects: but in these sorts of violence there is a fixed design, an end most steadfastly pursued; and means most suitable and proper pitched upon, and renewed with a most obstinate resolution and firmness, again and again, upon a disappointment; there is hardly any action of their life carried on with more contrivance than that which is to put an end to it: and if the

design were right, they would be counted rather cunning men than mad or senseless; so that it is plain these people make their judgment from the event only, which is doubtless very wrong for though the end be never so naught, unreasonable, and wicked, yet a man is not therefore mad when he chooses it, but naught, unreasonable, and wicked. A man indeed is in some sense mad when he is under the dominion of any of his passions, and out of the government of reason: but because a man's reason is given him by God, to govern himself withal, and to keep his passions in good order, therefore men do not excuse the mischievous effects of any of these passions by saying the man was mad. And when one man kills another with equal deliberation, with as much preparation and contrivance as some men show in despatching themselves, he is not commonly acquitted by making it manslaughter, but found guilty of murder: and there can be no reason for this, but that in self-murder nobody else receives damage, for whom the jury might be concerned; which shows they rather consider the mischief that is done, than the state and disposition of mind with which it is done.

Neither do I, by this, intend to say, that they who commit these violences on themselves are not deprived of their sense and reason; but that it is not always so: it were indeed to be wished much rather, that all self-murderers were truly distracted, than that any should be so with reason and sense entire and sound. But all the world sees the contrary; there are many of them go about this business as regularly, leisurely, and deliberately as Ahithophel here did, they rise, get them to their home, and set their household in order, just as he did; they resolve on it a good while before, they pursue it steadily; they sometimes justify this practice, and defend it by principles; so that, upon some pressing calamity, one may expect such an issue from them before it actually comes to pass : and yet, when it comes to pass, it is all one; it is as if they had been suddenly seized with frenzy, and they had been distracted but an hour before: the jury and the coroners see nothing but the sad event, and, in commiseration to the surviving relations, if any thing be to be saved to them, declare them distracted; and no man but a mad man would destroy himself, is all that is said to justify such a sentence. Which