Thou shalt not kill.
We have now completed both the spiritual and the
temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and
obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn
how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor.
Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the
power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority
to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we
read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and
sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the
individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government.
Now this commandment is easy enough and has been
often treated, because we hear it annually in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 5, 21
ff., where Christ Himself explains and sums it up, namely, that we must not
kill neither with hand, heart, mouth, signs, gestures, help, nor counsel.
Therefore it is here forbidden to every one to be angry, except those (as we
said) who are in the place of God, that is, parents and the government. For it
is proper for God and for every one who is in a divine estate to be angry, to
reprove and punish, namely, on account of those very persons who transgress
this and the other commandments.
But the cause and need of this commandment is
that God well knows that the world is evil, and that this life has much
unhappiness; therefore He has placed this and the other commandments between
the good and the evil. Now, as there are many assaults upon all commandments,
so it happens also in this commandment that we must live among many people who
do us harm, so that we have cause to be hostile to them.
As when your neighbor sees that you have a better
house and home [a larger family and more fertile fields], greater possessions
and fortune from God than he, he is sulky, envies you, and speaks no good of
you.
Thus by the devil's incitement you will get many
enemies who cannot bear to see you have any good, either bodily or spiritual.
When we see such people, our hearts, in turn, would rage and bleed and take
vengeance. Then there arise cursing and blows, from which follow finally misery
and murder. Here, now, God like a kind father steps in ahead of Us, interposes
and wishes to have the quarrel settled, that no misfortune come of it, nor one
destroy another. And briefly He would hereby protect, set free, and keep in
peace every one against the crime and violence of every one else; and would
have this commandment placed as a wall, fortress, and refuge about our
neighbor, that we do him no hurt nor harm in his body.
Thus this commandment aims at this, that no one
offend his neighbor on account of any evil deed, even though he have fully
deserved it. For where murder is forbidden, all cause also is forbidden whence
murder may originate. For many a one, although he does not kill, yet curses and
utters a wish, which would stop a person from running far if it were to strike
him in the neck [makes imprecations, which if fulfilled with respect to any
one, he would not live long]. Now since this inheres in every one by nature and
it is a common practice that no one is willing to suffer at the hands of
another, God wishes to remove the root and source by which the heart is
embittered against our neighbor, and to accustom us ever to keep in view this
commandment, always to contemplate ourselves in it as in a mirror, to regard
the will of God, and with hearty confidence and invocation of His name to
commit to Him the wrong which we suffer. Thus we shall suffer our enemies to
rage and be angry, doing what they can, and we learn to calm our wrath, and to
have a patient, gentle heart, especially toward those who give us cause to be
angry, that is, our enemies.
Therefore the entire sum of what it means not to
kill is to be impressed most explicitly upon the simple-minded. In the first
place that we harm no one, first, with our hand or by deed. Then, that we do
not employ our tongue to instigate or counsel thereto. Further, that we neither
use nor assent to any kind of means or methods whereby any one may be injured.
And finally, that the heart be not ill disposed toward any one, nor from anger
and hatred wish him ill, so that body and soul may be innocent in regard to
every one, but especially those who wish you evil or inflict such upon you. For
to do evil to one who wishes and does you good is not human, but diabolical.
Secondly, under this commandment not only he is
guilty who does evil to his neighbor, but he also who can do him good, prevent,
resist evil, defend and save him, so that no bodily harm or hurt happen to him
and yet does not do it. If, therefore, you send away one that is naked when you
could clothe him, you have caused him to freeze to death; you see one suffer
hunger and do not give him food, you have caused him to starve. So also, if you
see any one innocently sentenced to death or in like distress, and do not save
him, although you know ways and means to do so, you have killed him. And it
will not avail you to make the pretext that you did not afford any help,
counsel, or aid thereto for you have withheld your love from him and deprived
him of the benefit whereby his life would have been saved.
Therefore God also rightly calls all those
murderers who do not afford counsel and help in distress and danger of body and
life, and will pass a most terrible sentence upon them in the last day, as
Christ Himself has announced when He shall say, Matt.25, 42f.: I was an
hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was
a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in
prison and ye visited Me not. That is: You would have suffered Me and Mine to
die of hunger thirst, and cold, would have suffered the wild beasts to tear us
to pieces, or left us to rot in prison or perish in distress. What else is that
but to reproach them as murderers and bloodhounds? For although you have not
actually done all this, you have nevertheless, so far as you were concerned,
suffered him to pine and perish in misfortune.
It is just as if I saw some one navigating and
laboring in deep water [and struggling against adverse winds] or one fallen
into fire, and could extend to him the hand to pull him out and save him, and
yet refused to do it. What else would I appear, even in the eyes of the world,
than as a murderer and a criminal?
Therefore it is God's ultimate purpose that we
suffer harm to befall no man, but show him all good and love; and, as we have
said it is specially directed toward those who are our enemies. For to do good
to our friends is but an ordinary heathen virtue as Christ says Matt. 5, 46.
Here we have again the Word of God whereby He
would encourage and urge us to true noble and sublime works, as gentleness
patience, and, in short, love and kindness to our enemies, and would ever
remind us to reflect upon the First Commandment, that He is our God, that is,
that He will help, assist, and protect us, in order that He may thus quench the
desire of revenge in us.
This we ought to practice and inculcate and we
would have our hands full doing good works. But this would not be preaching for
monks; it would greatly detract from the religious estate, and infringe upon
the sanctity of Carthusians, and would even be regarded as forbidding good
works and clearing the convents. For in this wise the ordinary state of
Christians would be considered just as worthy, and even worthier, and everybody
would see how they mock and delude the world with a false, hypocritical show of
holiness, because they have given this and other commandments to the winds, and
have esteemed them unnecessary, as though they were not commandments but mere
counsels, and have at the same time shamelessly proclaimed and boasted their
hypocritical estate and works as the most perfect life, in order that they
might lead a pleasant, easy life, without the cross and without patience, for
which reason, too, they have resorted to the cloisters, so that they might not
be obliged to suffer any wrong from any one or to do him any good. But know now
that these are the true, holy, and godly works, in which, with all the angels
He rejoices, in comparison with which all human holiness is but stench and
filth, and besides, deserves nothing but wrath and damnation.
