Suicide is education as deterrence.

The law of Beaumont, in Northern France, states that a suicide is to be dragged “as cruelly as possible in order to make a show of the experience to others.”

Luther establishes that suicide is the devil’s education. The devil has taught suicides “to rush into voluntary death” and he has given them sword and rock and water to accomplish it.

The very same suicide is nothing less than divine pedagogy. “[T]hey are examples by which our Lord God wishes to show that the devil is powerful and also that we should be diligent in prayer. But for these examples, we would not fear God. Hence he must teach us in this way.”

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Minois, History, 35.
Martin Luther, Works, vol. 54, 29.