Chapter 13.—Whether Abortions, If
They are Numbered Among the Dead, Shall Not Also Have a Part in the
Resurrection.
To these objections, then, of our
adversaries which I have thus detailed, I will now reply, trusting
that God will mercifully assist my endeavors. That abortions,
which, even supposing they were alive in the womb, did also die
there, shall rise again, I make bold neither to affirm nor to deny,
although I fail to see why, if they are not excluded from the
number of the dead, they should not attain to the resurrection of
the dead. For either all the dead shall not rise, and there will
be to all eternity some souls without bodies though they once had
them,—only in their mother’s womb, indeed; or, if all human
souls shall receive again the bodies which they had wherever they
lived, and which they left when they died, then I do not see how I
can say that even those who died in their mother’s womb shall
have no resurrection. But whichever of these opinions any one may
adopt concerning them, we must at least apply to them, if they rise
again, all that we have to say of infants who have been
born.