Tertullian — On the Soul 26
But every unevenness of human opinion runs only as far as God's borders. Onto our lines I will now gather my step, to prove to a Christian what I answered to philosophers and physicians. Build faith from your own foundation, brother; look at living wombs of most holy women — and not only infants already breathing there, but even prophesying. See Rebecca's inwards troubled, and birth still far off, and no strike of air. See a twin fetus tumulting in the mother's places, and the two peoples nowhere yet. Portentous, perhaps, the petulance of infancy already contending before living, already spirited before ensouled — if it had only disturbed the mother by leaping. But when birth is opened and the number is inspected and the omen recognized, I think not only the infants' souls are proved, but also their fight.
Look also at singular conceptions, and more monstrous ones still — of a barren woman and of a virgin — who might by that very fact have been able to bring forth unfinished children against nature's overturn, the one dull of seed, the other untouched. It would have been fitting, if anywhere, that they be born without soul who had not been conceived in the right way — yet they too live each in her womb. Elizabeth exults: John had pushed within. Mary glorifies the Lord: Christ had stirred within. The mothers recognize their fetuses each to each; the fetuses, recognized mutually by them, are living — and they were not only souls but also spirits. So also to Jeremiah the voice of God's law: before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. If God forms in the womb, he also breathes after the pattern of the beginning: and God formed man and breathed into him the breath of life. Nor would God know a man in the womb unless whole: and before you came out of the belly, I sanctified you. A body still dead? By no means: for God is of the living, not of the dead.
Latin
[1] Sed omnis inaequalitas sententiae humanae usque ad dei terminos. In nostras iam lineas gradum colligam, ut quod philosophis medicisque respondi, Christiano probem. De tuo, frater, fundamento fidem aedifica; aspice uiuentes uteros sanctissimarum feminarum nec modo spirantes iam illic infantes, uerum etiam prophetantes. [2] Ecce uiscera Rebeccae inquietantur et longe adhuc partus et aeris nullus impulsus. Ecce duplex fetus in locis matris tumultuatur et nusquam adhuc populi duo. Portentosa forsitan petulantia infantiae ante certantis quam uiuentis, ante animosae quam animatae, si tantummodo matrem subsultando turbasset. At cum partus aperitus et numerus inspicitur et auguratus recognoscitur, puto, iam non animae solummodo probantur infantum, sed et pugnae. [3] Detinebatur qui praeuenerat nasci a praeuento necdum plenius edito, tantum manu nato. Et si ipse animam de prima aspiratione potabat Platonico more aut de aeris rigore carpebat Stoica forma, quid ille qui expectabatur, qui adhuc intus detinebatur et foris iam detinebat? Nondum, opinor, spirans plantam fratris inuaserat, etiamnunc calens matre se priorem prodisse cupiebat. O infantem et aemulum et ualidum et olim contentiosum, credo, quia uiuum.
[4] Aspice etiam singulares conceptus et quidem monstrosiores, sterilis et uirginis, quae uel hoc ipso imperfectos edere potuissent pro euersione naturae, ut altera seminis stupida, altera intacta. Decebat, si forte, sine anima nasci, qui fuerant non rite concepti, sed et illi uiuunt in suo quisque utero. Exsultat Elizabeth, Johannes intus impulerat; glorificat dominum Maria. Christus intus instinxerat. Agnoscunt matres suos inuicem fetus, agnitae mutuo ab ipsis utique uiuentibus, qui non tantum animae erant, uerum et spiritus. [5] Sic et ad Hieremiam legis dei uocem: priusquam te in utero fingerem, noui te. Si fingit deus in utero, et afflat ex primordii forma: et finxit deus hominem et flauit in eum flatum uitae. Nec nosset autem hominem deus in utero nisi totum: et priusquam exires de uulua, sanctificaui te. Et mortuum adhuc corpus? Vtique nequaquam: deus enim uiuorum, non mortuorum.