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- "And the second commandment of the Teaching; 2. Thou shalt
not commit murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt
not commit paederasty, thou shalt not commit fornication, thou
shalt not steal, thou shalt not practise magic, thou shalt not
practise witchcraft, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion
nor kill that which is begotten."
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume VII, Apostolic Teachings and
Constitutions, Chapter II. - The Second Commandment: Gross Sin
Forbidden.
- "And near that place I saw another strait place into which
the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down
and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having
the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many
children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and
there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in
the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused
abortion." Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume X,
The Apocalypse of Peter
- "Among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a
nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping
it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the
limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering
care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire
fetus is extracted by a violent delivery. "There is also [another instrument in
the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in
this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the
name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] "the slayer of the infant," which of course
was alive. . . ." [The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough
that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless
infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive"
210 AD Tertullian The Soul 25
- "And near that place I saw another strait place . . . and
there sat women . . . And over against them many children who
were born to them out of due time sat crying. And there came
forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes.
And these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion"
137 AD The Apocalypse of Peter 25
- "And now I should wish to meet him who says or believes that
we are initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant. Think
you that it can be possible for so tender, so little a body to
receive those fatal wounds; for any one to shed, pour forth, and
drain that new blood of a youngling, and of a man scarcely come
into existence? No one can believe this, except one who can dare
to do it. And I see that you at one time expose your begotten
children to wild beasts and to birds; at another, that you crush
them when strangled with a miserable kind of death. There are
some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the
source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a
parricide before they bring forth."
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume IV, The Octavius of Minucius Felix,
Chapter
- "Christians marry, like everyone else, and they beget
children, but they do not cast out their offspring."
250 AD Letter of Diognetus ch.5, vs.6
- "Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that
which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs
for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of
death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being
desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that
they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed
degrees" 314 AD Council of Ancyra canon 21
- "He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his
own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who
throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who
corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or
who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to
hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a
philtrum, if the man that takes it die upon it; so are they who
take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on
the highway, and rapparees" 374 AD Basil
the Great First Canonical Letter, canon 8
- "I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who
daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother
. . . Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure
barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their
conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through
their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often
happens, they die with their offspring, they enter the lower
world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ
but also of suicide and child murder" 396
AD Jerome Letters 22:13
- "Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft;
for He says, "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." Thou shall
not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is
begotten; for "everything that is shaped, and has received a
soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being
unjustly destroyed." Ante-Nicene Fathers:
Volume VII, Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, Book VII, Moral
Exhortations
- "If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she
gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be
punished accordingly as the woman's husband imposes on him; and
he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows,
then you shall give life for life" Exodus
21:22-23
- "In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may
not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human
being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its
sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing;
nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or
destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is
going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed"
210 AD Tertullian Apology 9:8
- "Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance,
whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not"
374 AD Basil the Great First Canonical
Letter, canon 2
- "Now we allow that life begins with conception because we
contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking
its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul
does" 210 AD Tertullian Apology 27
- "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,
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."
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume III, Tertullian, A Treatise on the
soul, Chapter VII.-On the Formation and State of the Embryo
- "The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the
man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22]"
210 AD Tertullian
- "The law, moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring,
and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to
destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done,
she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living
creature, and diminishing humankind."
Josephus, Flavius, The Works of Josephus, Flavius Josephus
Against Apion, Book II, 25
- "The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not
murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce
boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You
shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall
not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child"
150 AD Didache 2:1
- "There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical
preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their
very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth.
And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your
[false] gods. . . . To us [Christians] it is not lawful either
to see or hear of homicide" 226 AD
Minucius Felix Octavius 30
- "There are some women among you who by drinking special
potions extinguish the life of the future human in their very
bowels, thus committing murder before they even give birth."
170 AD Mark Felix, Christian Lawyer,
Octavius chap. 30
- "Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor,
again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born."
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume I, The Epistle
of Barnabas, chap. XIX, The Way of Light
- "Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft;
for He says, 'You shall not suffer a witch to live' [Ex. 22:18].
Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that
which is begotten; for "everything that is shaped, and has
received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as
being unjustly destroyed." 400 AD The
Apostolic Constitutions Apostolic Constitutions 7:3
- "What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such
is our character, that we are murderers? . . . [W]hen we say
that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit
murder, and will have to give an account to God for the
abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does
not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the
womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care,
and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose
an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with
child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to
destroy it" 177 AD Athenagoras A Plea for
the Christians 35, Embassy chap. 5
- "What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that
women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give
account of it to God? For the same person would not regard the
fetus in the womb as a living thing and therefore an object of
God's care, and at the same time slay it, once it had come to
life." 177 AD Athenagoras Plea, ch.35
- "When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits us from
open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but
he warns us against the commission of those things which are
esteemed lawful among men.. Therefore, let no one imagine that
even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is
the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for
life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime
with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive [unborn]
souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they
themselves have not given. "Can anyone, indeed, expect that they
would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even
from their own? But these are, without any controversy, wicked
and unjust" 307 AD Lactantius Divine
Institutes 6:20
- "Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication . . . Why sow
where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? --
where there are many efforts at abortion? -- where there is
murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let
conntinue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see
how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery,
adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than
murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take
off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do
thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow
after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of
procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was
given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to
drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing
to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping
upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed
be hers, yet the causing of it is thine"
391 AD John Chrysostom Homilies on Romans 24
- "Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest
the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those
which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to
death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such
spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we
should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death?
And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on
abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God
for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder?"
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume II, The
Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter V.-The Christians Condemn and
Detest All Cruelty
- "Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs
to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so
as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on
account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by
a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what
great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching
adultery and murder at the same time!" 228
AD Hippolytus Refutation of All Heresies
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