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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.
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