Wrongful death

“ When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.—Pastor Russell saw and revived the teaching of the Word of God that death is death. ”

“ That when I seemed to call on God, I invoked the devil Others, more charitable, say, in spite of their hatred of my crime, That my death may be admired although my life was not blameless; That my resignation showed that I died in hope and faith; That to forgive, to suffer without complaint or murmur, Is perfect love; and that the soul is purified From the sins of life by a death like mine. ”

“ Death is the certain doom of all mankind--- To learn to die is an heroic work:--- But thus to die an ignominious death--- Without a trial, or the forms of law, Pronounc'd a traitor---hurry'd from the stage--- Torn from existence as an useless worm, By a base, vile, assassinating hand, Fires all my soul with fury and revenge. ”

“ I wish to die with thee, if fate brings thy turn to perish first, and not to prolong my span of life at all, when once dismal death has cast thee to the tomb.
"For if thou chance to close thy eyes for ever, a victim to the maddened attack of the men-at-arms;—by whatsoever doom thy breath be cut off, by sword or disease, by sea or soil, I forswear every wanton and corrupt flame, and vow myself to a death like thine; that they who were bound by one marriage-union may be embraced in one and the same punishment. ”

“ Let it be your consolation, gentlemen, if hereafter you should discover that you have sent me to an undeserved death, that you at least will not have hurried a soul spotted with the awful crime of murder before its Maker. And oh," he exclaimed in conclusion, with solemn earnestness, "may all who have the guilt of blood upon them hasten, whilst life is still granted them, to cleanse themselves by repentance of that foul sin, so that not only the sacrifice of one poor life, but that most holy and tremendous one offered in the world's consummate hour, may not for them have been made in vain! ”

“ Punishment and death,―these are the portion of the depraved. To deserve death in the iniquity of guilt,―this is the climax of crime. To die without regret at the call of duty,―this is the acme of heroism. ”

“ Who has told us, what God can only tell, that misfortunes are judgments, or that death is one? That death which is common to all men? And as to the different and disastrous manners of dying; have not fire and sword, famine and pestilence, poison and torture, wild beasts and accidents, destroyed as many good men as evil men? ”

“ God! I never killed a man:
Now I'll do the best I can.
Rip you to the evil heart,
Laugh to see the life-blood start.
Bah! You swine! I hate you so.
Show you mercy? No! . . . and no! . . .
There! I've done it. See! He lies
Death a-staring from his eyes ”

“ To compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead, concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge him into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or reward him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good and evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of individual existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death. ”

“ Thou woundest to the death; and when Thou seest the victim on the point of expiring, Thou healest one wound in order to inflict another! Alas! usually we die but once; and the very cruellest murderers in times of persecution, though they prolonged life, it is true, yet were content to destroy it but once. But Thou, less compassionate than they, takest away our life time after time, and restorest it again. ”

“ Die—if such be your wish—your death would be a benefit both to the world and me. Since I have heard the prince's accusations and your subsequent confessions, I feel as though surrounded by an atmosphere of crimes and treachery, which terrifies and oppresses my mind with the fearful apprehension of becoming myself infected with its black wickedness, and I shudder, lest in time I might become as guilty as yourself ”

“ If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed—if these things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder—then, of a surety, that murder was avenged! ”

“ Death meets those myriads whilst indulging the most appalling passions—their hands filled with weapons of carnage, their hearts with fratricidal hate. It is the sense of the moral death involved, searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. ”

“ Thou shalt save thyself and them that hear thee: which all must necessarily be prevented, if all that comes within the sense of these soul-killers must, as guilty of blood, be corporally killed and put to death. ”

“ You are, I am sure, aware that death ends all our woes, and this being so, it may be termed our happiness and tranquil rest. It is, therefore, a misfortune if a man desires death and cannot obtain it, and so the most grievous punishment that can be given to a wrongdoer is not death, but a continual torment, great enough to render death desirable, but withal too slight to bring it nearer. And this was how a husband used his wife, as you shall hear. ”

“ With what eagerness do we pursue! with what zeal apprehend! with what joy do we bring him to justice! Even the dreadful sentence of death does not shock us, when pronounced upon him. We hear it with solemn satisfaction; and acknowledge the justice of the Divine sentence, 'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.'
"But if this be the case in every common murder, what shall be thought of her who has murdered her husband,—the man in whose arms she has lain, and whom she has sworn at God's altar to love and cherish? ”

“ The crime for which I am to suffer is murder. Reverend Sir, you will shudder at my cruelty, but I only took life—those that I deprived of life, though they did not in a moment send a man to his last account, inflicted on many a lingering death—for years they have tortured men's minds as well as their bodies, and after years of mental and bodily torture, sent them to a premature grave. ”

“ A second look He gave, which said, “I freely all forgive; This blood is for thy ransom paid; I die that thou mayst live.” Thus, while His death my sin displays In all its blackest hue, Such is the mystery of grace, It seals my pardon too. ”

“ This one gross miscarriage of justice, as it seemed to him, raised doubts at the same time in his startled soul as to the rightfulness of all his previous hangings. Had he been in the habit of doing innocent men to death for years? ”

“ Like the criminal under sentence of death, he notches upon his wooden stick, as Sterne's captive did, the days, after the lapse of which he must be introduced to his dreaded fate; in the case of the criminal, merely death — a cessation from the pains and toils of life; but in our cases, the commencement of a living death; a death never ending, second in horror only to the eternal torment of the wicked in a future state. ”

“ The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. ”

“ With his own sense imagines it endued.
So he complains because he was born mortal,
Nor sees that there will be in real death
No other self which living can lament
That he has perished, none that will stand by
And grieve over his burnt and mangled corpse.
For if it be an evil after death
To be mauled by teeth of beasts, why should it seem
Less cruel to be laid out on a pyre
And scorched with hot flames, or to be embalmed
In stifling honey, or to lie stiff and cold
Couched on the cool slab of a chilly stone,
Or to be crushed down under a weight of earth? ”

“ I was made to see that if I would suffer rightly, I must pass sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments all as dead to me, and myself as dead to them. ”

“ The death of others instills in you so much horror that your own death becomes an object of desire; that is to say, if by dying, you would be in some degree useful! One calls to mind deaths which have put an end to angers and to revolts. One only retains this ambition, to be a useful corpse. ”

“ CHAPTER VI Vengeance IT strikes a chill through me, even yet, to recall the awful horror of that instant. The fer-de-lance—death in a few heartbeats, and such a death!—a death that melts a man into an abomination! ”

“ If his crime is worthy of death, has he not already suffered more than death? The burden of his great sin he must carry through life—and could his worst enemy be gratified by casting one more stone at this poor, bleeding body, or be pleased by adding one more pang to his tortured mind? ”

“ Verse 3. Should the wicked by permitted to hold their substance all their days, Death, that terrible messenger, shall at last drag them from it; nor shall their glory descend after them to the grave, but that wickedness by which they acquired it shall lie down with them in the dust and torture their souls in hell.—Lawson. ”

“ Thus shall you yourselves die, if your crimes accompany you to that last moment.
Every thing will change in your eyes, and you shall not change yourselves: you shall die, and you shall die in sin as you have lived; and your death will be similar to your life. Prevent this misery, O my brethren! live the fife of the righteous, and your death, similar to theirs, will be accompanied with joy, peace, and consolation. ”

“ But a glimpse of the reality which we achieve by burial would annihilate, in an instant, every sentiment for continuing that process. Nay, more, it would arouse a powerful repugnance to the horrible notion that we too must some day become so vile and offensive, and, it may be, so dangerous; a repugnance surmountable only through the firm belief that after death the condition of the body is a matter of utter indifference to its dead life-tenant. ”

“ And thus, when they die, they seem totally to perish. Death, in such instances, must appear terrible. It must be considered as the greatest evil. But why is death set in such shocking lights, when it is the universal lot? ”

“ But this is not all: sometimes more dismal effects attend this inquisition, for death is but too often the cure of their madness and end of their sorrows; some with ill usage, some with grief, and many with both, are barbarously cut off in the prime of their years and flower of their health, who otherwise might have been mothers of a numerous issue, and survived many years. This is murder in the deepest sense, and much more cruel than dagger or poison, because more lingering; they die by piecemeal, and in all the agonies and terrors of a distracted mind. ”

“ It is only in the vigor of youth and manhood that death is looked upon with horror. The aged view its near approach with calm serenity. The convicted murderer, as long as there is hope of pardon, reprieve, escape, or commutation of the death-penalty, evinces the utmost dread of the scaffold ”

“ Mortality hath already seized upon our bodies, but why do you not catch hold of this opportunity of releasing your souls from the chains and fetters of eternal death? Truly, my beloved, all that can be spoken of torments and miseries in this life, suppose we could imagine all the exquisite torments invented by the most cruel tyrants since the beginning, to be combined in some one kind of torture, and would then stretch our imagination beyond that, as far as that which is composed of all torments surpasseth the simplest death, yet we do not conceive nor express unto you that death to come. ”

“ Oh! 'tis too much for this offending wretch,
This parricide, that murders with her crimes,
Shortens her father's age, and cuts him off,
Ere little more than half his years be number'd.
SCI. Would it were otherwise—but thou must die.—
CAL. That I must die, it is my only comfort;
Death is the privilege of human nature,
And life without it were not worth our taking:
"Thither the poor, the prisoner, and the mourner, ⁠140
"Fly for relief, and lay their burthens down." ”

“ True, where both parties are good and pure, no harm may at first ensue, but at last an abnormal susceptibility results, by which any man or woman may be led into "the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell." ”

“ Therein we do them no wrong. Yourselves will bear me witness however and always in this place, I have protested that death is no evil, save as the element of injustice may be mingled therein. The sting of death is sin. Death, righteously inflicted, I repeat, is the reverse of an injury. ”

“ It says, that man should not only die, but die the very day of the offence. Now, if by death we understood merely a removal out of the world, or a separation of soul and body, the threatening was not executed after the forbidden fruit was tasted. But if it meant also, and chiefly, a state of sorrow, pain, and suffering, a liability to disease and fatal [Pg 101] accident, the goadings of a guilty conscience, and the consequent fear of punishment beyond the grave, then death began on the very day when man sinned, and the dissolution of the soul and body was but the closing scene of the tragedy. ”