Take for example Cato of Utica, who in Africa killed himself after
the great victory that Julius Caesar had. St. Austine well
declareth in his work _De civitate Dei_ that there was no strength
nor magnanimity in his destruction of himself, but plain
pusillanimity and impotency of stomach. For he was forced to do it
because his heart was too feeble to bear the beholding of another
man's glory or the suffering of other worldly calamities that he
feared should fall on himself. So that, as St. Austine well
proveth, that horrible deed is no act of strength, but an act of a
mind either drawn from the consideration of itself with some
fiendish fancy, in which the man hath need to be called home with
good counsel; or else oppressed by faint heart and fear, in which
a good part of the counsel must stand in lifting up his courage
with good consolation and comfort.
And therefore if we found any such religious person as was that
father whom Cassian writeth of, who were of such austerity and
apparent ghostly living as he was, and reputed by those who well
knew him for a man of singular virtue; and if it were perceived
that he had many strange visions appearing unto him; and if after
that it should now be perceived that the man went about secretly
to destroy himself--whosoever should hap to come to the knowledge
of it and intended to do his best to hinder it, he must first find
the means to search and find out the manner and countenance of the
man.
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