Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To Amphilochius, concerning the Canons.
VIII. The man who in a rage has taken up a hatchet against his own wife is a murderer.
But it is what I should have expected from your intelligence that you should very properly
remind me to speak on these points more fully, because a wide distinction must be drawn
between cases where there is and where there is not intent. A case of an act purely unintentional,
and widely removed from the purpose of the agent, is that of a man who throws a
stone at a dog or a tree, and hits a man. The object was to drive off the beast or to shake
down the fruit. The chance comer falls fortuitously in the way of the blow, and the act is
unintentional. Unintentional too is the act of any one who strikes another with a strap or
a flexible stick, for the purpose of chastising him, and the man who is being beaten dies. In
this case it must be taken into consideration that the object was not to kill, but to improve,
the offender. Further, among unintentional acts must be reckoned the case of a man in a
fight who when warding off an enemy’s attack with cudgel or hand, hits him without mercy
in some vital part, so as to injure him, though not quite to kill him. This, however, comes
very near to the intentional; for the man who employs such a weapon in self defence, or
who strikes without mercy, evidently does not spare his opponent, because he is mastered
by passion. In like manner the case of any one who uses a heavy cudgel, or a stone too big
for a man to stand, is reckoned among the unintentional, because he does not do what he
meant: in his rage he deals such a blow as to kill his victim, yet all he had in his mind was
to give him a thrashing, not to do him to death. If, however, a man uses a sword, or anything
of the kind, he has no excuse: certainly none if he throws his hatchet. For he does not strike
with the hand, so that the force of the blow may be within his own control, but throws, so
that from the weight and edge of the iron, and the force of the throw, the wound cannot fail
to be fatal.
On the other hand acts done in the attacks of war or robbery are distinctly intentional,
and admit of no doubt. Robbers kill for greed, and to avoid conviction. Soldiers who inflict
death in war do so with the obvious purpose not of fighting, nor chastising, but of killing
their opponents. And if any one has concocted some magic philtre for some other reason,
and then causes death, I count this as intentional. Women frequently endeavour to draw
men to love them by incantations and magic knots, and give them drugs which dull their
tamen non ita pridem amicos habuerat; ac anno 568, Musonii morte affictos litteris amicissimis consolatus fuerat.
Sæculum apud Latinos non semper stricte sumitur; velut cum ait Hieronymus in Epist. 27 ad Marcellum, in Christi
verbis explicandis per tanta jam sæcula tantorum ingenia sudasse; vel cum auctor libri De rebaptismate in Cypri-
anum tacito nomine invehitur, quod adversus prisca consulta post tot sæculorum tantam seriem nunc primum
repente sine ratione insurgat, p. 357. De hoc ergo triginta annorum numero non paucos deducendos esse crediderim.
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