A. The nature of man is to be rational, and above brutish nature, and to choose by reason, though against sensitive inclination. Why else must martyrs choose to die rather than to sin? and soldiers choose their own death before their captain's, or their king's, in which God and reason justify them? Q. 13. But by this rule an army should kill their general, rather than to be killed or betrayed to death by him; because all their lives are better than one man's. A. If they be but some part of an army, and the general's life be more useful to the rest, and to their king and country, and the public good, than all theirs, they should rather die, as the Theban legion did. But if the general be a traitor to his king and country, and would destroy all, or part, of the army to the public loss and danger, it is no murder if they kill him when they have no other way to save their lives. Q. 14. How many sorts of murder are there, and which are the worst? , A. I. One of the worst is persecution: killing men because they are good, or because they will not break God's laws. And lower degrees of persecution by banishment, imprisonment, mulets, participate of guilt against this command. II. A second sort of heinous murder is by massacres, and unlawful wars, in which multitudes are murdered, and that studiously, and with greatest industry, and countries ruined and undone. The multitude of heinous crimes that are contained in an unlawful war are hardly known, but by sad experience. III. Another sort of heinous murder is, when parents kill their own children, or children their parents. IV. Another is, when princes destroy their own subjects, whom by office they are bound to protect: or subjects their princes, whom they are bound to obey, and defend, and honour. V. Another sort of heinous murder is, when it is committed on pretence of justice, by perjured witnesses, false accusers, or false judges, or magistrates: as Naboth was murdered by Jezebel and Ahab, and Christ by the Jews, upon false accusations of blasphemy and treason. For in this case the murder is fathered on God, and on justice, which must abhor it, and the best things which should preserve the peace of the innocent are used to the worst ends, even to destroy them. And a man f 1 Chron. xi. 19; 1 John iii. 16; Rev. xii. 11. 8 Prov. xxix. 10; Rev. vi. 10, 12; xviii. 24, and xix. 2; Matt. xxiii. 35. h1 Kings xxi. 19. hath no defence for himself, as he may have against murderers, or open enemies; and he is destroyed by those that are bound to defend him. And the most devilish, wicked, perjured men, are made the masters of men's lives, and may conquer subjects by perverting law. VI. One of the most heinous crimes is, soul-murder, which is done by all that draw or drive men into sin, or from their duty to God and the care of their salvation, either by seducing, false opinions, opposing necessary truth and duty, or by scorns, or threats. But none here sin so grievously as wicked rulers, and wicked teachers and pastors of the churches. Others kill souls by one and one, but these by hundreds and thousands. And therefore it is the devil's main endeavour, through the world, to get rulers and teachers on his side, and turn the word and sword against him that did ordain them. All the idolatrous world that know not Christ are kept under the power of the devil, principally by wicked rulers and teachers. And so is the infidel and Mahometan world. When the Turks had once conquered the eastern empire, how quickly did those famous churches and large nations forsake Christ, and turn to the grossest of deceivers! Oh, how many millions of souls have been since hereby destroyed! And what wicked, deceitful, and contentious teachers have done to the murdering of souls, alas! the whole christian world is witness. Some by heresy, and some by proud tyranny, and some by malignant opposition to the serious practice of that holy law of God which they preach; and some by ignorance, and some by slothful, treacherous negligence, and some by church divisions, by their snares, or contentiousness. Such as Paul speaks of Phil. i. 15, 16, and ii. 3, And some, in envy, malign and hinder the preaching of the Gospel, by such as they distaste. (1 Thes. ii. 16.) VII. But of all soul-murder, it is one of the; greatest which is done by wicked parents on their own children, who breed them up in ignorance, wickedness, and profane neglect, if not hatred and scorn, of serious holiness, and teach them malignant principles, or hinder them from the necessary means of their salvation that by example teach them to swear and lie, and be drunken or profane. For parents to be the cruel damners of their own children, and this when in false hypocrisy they vowed them in baptism to God, and promised their godly education, is odious cruelty and perfidiousness. i Deut. xii. 31; Psalm cvi. 37, 38, VIII. And it is yet a more heinous sin to be a murderer of one's own soul, as every ungodly and impenitent sinner is: for nature teacheth all men to love themselves, and to be unwilling of their own destruction. And no wonder that such are unmerciful to the souls of wives, children, and servants, who will damn themselves, and that for nothing; and that, after all the importunities of God and man to hinder them.k Q. 15. When may a man be accounted a soul-self-murderer, seeing every man hath some sin? A. Every sin, (as every sickness to the body,) is an enemy to life, though it destroy it not: and as wounding a man, yea, or injurious hurting him, or desiring his hurt, is some breach of this command, as Christ tells us, (Matt. v.,) so every sin is as hurtful to the soul. But those are the mortal, murdering sins, which are inconsistent with the predominant habitual love of God and holiness, and are not only from the imperfection of this divine nature and image, but from the absence of it: such as are the sins of the unbelievers and impenitent. Q. 16. But he shall not be hanged for killing another that doth it against his will: and no man is willing to damn himself? A. But a man will himself be a dead man if he kill himself unwillingly and all wicked men do willingly murder their own souls. They be not willing to burn in hell, but they are willingly ungodly, worldly, sensual: and unholiness is the death or misery of the soul, and the departing of the heart or love from God, and choosing the world and fleshly pleasure before his grace and glory, is the true soul-murdering. When God maketh poison destructive to man's nature, and forbids us taking it, and tells a man that it will kill him; if this man will yet take the poison because it is sweet, or will not believe that it is deadly, it is not his being unwilling to die that will save him. When God hath told men that unholiness and a fleshly mind is death, he destroyeth his soul that yet will choose it.m And it is a heinous aggravation that poor sinners have so little for the salvation which they sell. The devil can give them nothing that is to be put into the balance against the least hope or possibility of the life to come; and for a man to sell his own soul and all his hopes of heaven, for a base lust, or a transitory * Prov. xiii. 13; xxix. 1; vi. 32, and xxi. 15. shadow, as profane Esau sold his birthright for a morsel, is self-murder of a most odious kind. Q. 17. But you make also our friends that love us to be murderers of us, if they draw us to sin, or neglect their duty? As the love of his own flesh doth not hinder, but further the drunkard's, fornicator's, and idle person's murder of his own soul; so your friend's carnal love to you may be so far from hindering, that it may further your destruction. They that draw each other to fornication, to gaming, to time-wasting plays, to gluttony and drunkenness, may do it in love. If they give you poison in love, it will kill you." And if parents that are bound to feed their children do famish them, do you think they do not murder them by omission? So may they; and so may ministers murder the souls that they are by nature or office entrusted to instruct and diligently govern. Q. 18. Are there any other ways of murder? A. So many that it is hard to number them. As by rash anger, hatred, malice, by drunkenness disposing to it. By magistrates not punishing murderers: by not defending the lives of others when we ought, and abundance more, which you may read in Bishop Downam's tables on the commandments. Q. 19. Must I defend my parents or children against the magistrate, or any one that would kill them by his commission? A. Not against justice, no doubt; what you must do against subjects who pretend an illegal commission to rob or kill yourself, parents, or children, or destroy cities and countries, is partly touched on under the fifth commandment, and partly matter unmeet for a catechism, or private, unlearned men's unnecessary discourse. Q. 20. Are there more ways of self-murder? A. Among others, excess of meat and idleness, destroy men's health, and murder millions. CHAP. XL. Of the Seventh Commandment. Q. 1. WHAT are the words of the seventh commandment? A. Thou shalt not commit adultery. n Gal. iv. 17, 18. Q. 2. What is the sin here forbidden? A. All unlawful, carnal copulation, and every evil inclination, or action, or omission which tendeth thereto, or partaketh of any degree of unchastity or pollution. Q. 3. Is all lust or inclination to generation a sin? A. No: for 1. Some is natural to man, and that not as corrupt; but as God said, "increase and multiply," before the fall, so no doubt he inclined nature thereto." 2. And the regular propagation of mankind is one of the noblest, natural works that man is instrumental in; a man being a more excellent thing than a house or any work of art. 3. And God hath put some such inclination into nature, in great wisdom and mercy to the world for if nature had not some considerable appetite to generation, and also strong desire of posterity, men would hardly be drawn to be at so much care, cost, and labour, to propagate mankind; but especially women would not so commonly submit to all their sickness, pain, danger, and after-trouble which now they undergo. But if a few self-denying persons did propagate mankind only as an act of obedience to God, the multitude of the ungodly would not do it. Q. 4. If it be so, why is any carnal act of generation forbidden? especially when it is an act of love, and doth nobody any harm? A. God hath in great wisdom and mercy to man made his laws for restraining men from inordinate lust and copulation, 1. The noblest things are basest when corrupted. Devils are worse than men, because they were higher and better before. A wicked man is incomparably worse and more miserable than a beast or a toad, because he is a nobler nature depraved. And so human generation is worse than that of swine or dogs, when it is vicious. 2. Promiscuous, unregulated generation, tends to the utter ruin and vitiating of mankind, by the overthrow of the just education of children, on which the welfare of mankind doth eminently depend. Alas, all care and order is little enough, and too little to keep corrupted nature from utter bestiality and malignity, much more to make youth wise and virtuous, without which it had been better never to have been born! When fathers know their own children, and when mothers have the love, and encouragement, and household advantage of order, which is necessary, some good may be done. But lawless • Heb. xiii. 4; Gen. i. 22, 28; ix.7; xxii. 17, and xxvi. 4, 24. |