The guilt, folly, and sources of suicide : two discourses, preached in the city of New-York, February, 1805 / by Samuel Miller.

  • Miller, Samuel, 1769-1850.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The guilt, folly, and sources of suicide : two discourses, preached in the city of New-York, February, 1805 / by Samuel Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    2. Suicide is a sin against human nature. If there be a crime that may be called unnatural, this is emphatically that crime. It offers violence to the principle of self-preservation, which is innate and universal. It is an outrage on the dignity of those faculties with which the Author of nature has endowed us; and it is not less inconsistent with the virtues of fortitude and self-command, which so highly exalt and adorn the human character. The fear of death is one of the strongest princi- ples that dwell in the bosom of man. But why should this principle operate not only more gene- rally and strongly in human beings than in the other animals, but almost exclusively in the former? It is difficult to assign any other reason for this fact, than that the all-wise Creator intended it as a bar- rier against the crime which we are considering; a crime which the brutal tribes have neither temp- tation nor ability to commit; but against which man, depraved, afflicted, and covered with evil, requires to be guarded by restraints of the most powerful kind. He then, who breaks through these restraints, who surmounts that abhorrence of self- destruction which the Author of nature hath so closely interwoven with every fibre of our constitu- tion, is as great a monster in morals as an atheist in religion, or as the most hideous assemblage of deformities in animal nature. But suicide is not only repugnant to every genuine feeling of human nature; it also offers insult to