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| On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation with the Subject of This Treatise.
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Chapter
XXXVII.—On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation
with the Subject of This Treatise.
Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and
completing the human embryo in the womb is no doubt regulated by some
power, which ministers herein to the will of God, whatever may be the
method which it is appointed to employ. Even the superstition of Rome,
by carefully attending to these points, imagined the goddess
Alemona to nourish the fœtus in the womb; as well as (the
goddesses) Nona and Decima, called after the most
critical months of gestation; and Partula, to manage and direct
parturition; and Lucina, to bring the child to the birth and
light of day. We, on our part, believe the angels to officiate herein
for God. The embryo therefore becomes a human being in the womb from
the moment that its form is completed. The law of Moses, indeed,
punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion, inasmuch
as there exists already the rudiment of a human being,1744
which has imputed to it even
now the condition of life and
death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by
living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state
with the mother. I must also say something about the period of the
soul’s birth, that I may omit nothing incidental in the whole
process. A mature and regular birth takes place, as a general rule, at
the commencement of the tenth month. They who theorize respecting
numbers, honour the number ten as the parent of all the others, and as
imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer
viewing this measure of time in reference to God, as if implying that
the ten months rather initiated man into the ten commandments; so that
the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural
birth should correspond to the numerical classification of the rules of
our regenerate life. But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the
seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the
eighth the honour of a numerical agreement with the sabbatical period;
so that the month in which God’s image is sometimes produced in a
human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which
God’s creation was completed and hallowed. Human nativity has
sometimes been allowed to be premature, and yet to occur in fit and
perfect accordance with an hebdomad or
sevenfold number, as an auspice of our resurrection, and rest, and
kingdom. The ogdoad, or eightfold
number, therefore, is not concerned in our formation;1745
| 1745 The
ogdoad, or number eight, mystically representing
“heaven,” where they do not marry. | for in the time it represents there will be
no more marriage.1746
| 1746 Beyond the
hebdomad comes the resurrection, on which see Matt. xxii. 30. | We have already
demonstrated the conjunction of the body and the soul, from the
concretion of their very seminations to the complete formation of the
fœtus. We now maintain their conjunction likewise from the
birth onwards; in the first place, because they both grow together,
only each in a different manner suited to the diversity of their
nature—the flesh in magnitude, the soul in intelligence—the
flesh in material condition, the soul in sensibility. We are, however,
forbidden to suppose that the soul increases in substance, lest it
should be said also to be capable of diminution in substance, and so
its extinction even should be believed to be possible; but its inherent
power, in which are contained all its natural peculiarities, as
originally implanted in its being, is gradually developed along with
the flesh, without impairing the germinal basis of the substance, which
it received when breathed at first into man. Take a certain quantity of
gold or of silver—a rough mass as yet: it has indeed a compact
condition, and one that is more compressed at the moment than it will
be; yet it contains within its contour what is throughout a mass of
gold or of silver. When this mass is afterwards extended by beating it
into leaf, it becomes larger than it was before by the elongation of
the original mass, but not by any addition thereto, because it is
extended in space, not increased in bulk; although in a way it is even
increased when it is extended: for it may be increased in form, but not
in state. Then, again, the sheen of the gold or the silver, which
when the metal was any in block was inherent in it no doubt really, but
yet only obscurely, shines out in developed lustre. Afterwards
various modifications of shape accrue, according to the feasibility in
the material which makes it yield to the manipulation of the artisan,
who yet adds nothing to the condition of the mass but its
configuration. In like manner, the growth and developments of the soul
are to be estimated, not as enlarging its substance, but as calling
forth its powers.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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