There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and which is thought a sound one — namely, to avoid falling into sin either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain. If this reason were a good one, then we would be compelled to urge men to destroy themselves at once, as soon as they have been washed in the laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin. That is the time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out. And if this escape may lawfully be secured by suicide, why not then especially? Why does any baptized person hold back his hand from taking his own life? Why does any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself to them, when he has the power to rid himself of them all so easily, and when it is written, “He who loves danger shall fall into it?”⁠a Why does he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which he may legitimately depart? But is anyone so blinded and twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth, as to think that, although a man ought to kill himself for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought nevertheless to live, and so expose himself to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all those evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to numberless other miseries in which this life inevitably entangles us? What reason, then, is there for us to spend time on those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or widowed continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have a much simpler and shorter method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned? If anyone thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I do not say he is foolish, but mad. With what face, then, can he say to any man, “Kill yourself, so that you do not add a heinous sin to your small sins while you live under an unchaste master, whose conduct is that of a barbarian?” How can he say this, if he cannot without wickedness say, “Kill yourself, now that you are washed from all your sins, so that you do not fall again into similar or even graver sins, while you live in a world which has such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to torment by its horrible cruelties, to overcome by its errors and terrors?” It is wicked to say this; it is therefore wicked to kill oneself. For if there could be any just cause of suicide, this would be one. And since not even this is so, there is none.