Chapter 87.—The Case of Monstrous Births.
We are not justified in affirming
even of monstrosities, which are born and live, however quickly
they may die, that they shall not rise again, nor that they shall
rise again in their deformity, and not rather with an amended and
perfected body. God forbid that the double limbed man who was
lately born in the East, of whom an account was brought by most
trustworthy brethren who had seen him,—an account which the
presbyter Jerome, of blessed memory, left in writing;—God
forbid, I say, that we should think that at the resurrection there
shall be one man with double limbs, and not two distinct men, as
would have been the case had twins been born. And so other births, which, because they have either a superfluity or a defect, or because they are very much deformed, are called monstrosities, shall at the resurrection be restored to the normal shape of man; and so each single soul shall possess its own body; and no bodies shall cohere together even though they were born in cohesion, but each separately shall possess all the members which constitute a complete human body.