em men of most courage, it shall well appear to them that well
weigh the matter that the mind whereby they be led to destroy
themselves groweth of pusillanimity and very foolish fear.

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. He must see whether he be lightsome, glad, and joyful or
dumpish, heavy, and sad, and whether he go about it as one that
were full of the glad hope of heaven, or as one who had his breast
stuffed full of tediousness and weariness of the world. If he were
found to be of the first fashion, it would be a token that the
devil had, by his fantastical apparitions, puffed him up in such a
childish pride that he hath finally persuaded him, by some
illusion showed him for the proof, that God's pleasure is that he
shall for his sake with his own hands kill himself.

VINCENT: Now, if a man so found it, uncle, what counsel should he
give him then?

ANTHONY: That would be somewhat out of our purpose, cousin, since
(as I told you before) the man would not be in sorrow and
tribulation, of which our matter speaketh