II. To the Initial Arguments

53. To the first argument [n.40] I concede that God can by his own gift justify an unborn child, as was in fact the case with Jeremiah and John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary [n.48]; but not by this sacrament, because while a child is in the mother’s womb has not the capacity for this sacrament.

54. To the second [n.41] I say that, as to temporal servitude, a child, while he is in the womb, is not distinct from the mother; for the master does not have lordship over the child save because he has it over the mother. But as to spiritual servitude or liberty things are not alike, because this has regard to the distinct person, and a child in the womb is as distinct in person from his mother as he is outside the womb.

55. To the third [n.42] I concede that fruit, insofar as it is something of the tree, follows the condition of the tree; yet insofar as it is something in itself, it can have conditions opposite to the tree in itself, for the fruit of the tree can be soft and the tree hard. So it is in the issue at hand, because justice and injustice have regard to the person in himself, not as he is conjoined or divided in place, but as he is divided personally in respect of the other person; therefore justice can belong to the offspring though not to the mother, or conversely. - A response can be made in another way to the intention of the Apostle.The text breaks off here, with nothing more added. ²⁴,a

a.a [Interpolated text]: For there [Romans 11.1-24] he is restraining the Romans from insult of the Jews. They were saying that the Jews were branches cut off and themselves branches ingrafted. For this reason does he say that some Jews are good and not cut off but natural branches, speaking thus: ‘if the root is holy’ (that is, the Patriarchs, who were the roots as it were of the Jewish people) ‘the branches are too’, namely they are holy (it is plain of the Apostles, who were Jews).