Ezekiel — Chapter 18
'Anima quae peccaverit, ipsa morietur' — the soul that sins, it shall die. Lapide gives an extended theological treatment of individual moral responsibility against the proverb 'the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.' He distinguishes (with Thomas Aquinas) between the inheritance of original sin (which is just) and personal guilt for another's act (which is not.
Verse 4
Behold, all souls are mine: Lapide uses this verse to refute several heresies — Manichean dualism (souls are not created by an evil principle), Traducian materialism (souls are not generated from parents like bodies), and Pelagianism (souls are not self-sufficient). All souls depend entirely on God for their existence and their good.
Verse 21
The wicked man who turns from all his sins shall live: Lapide uses this verse extensively in his treatise on the possibility of conversion even after great sin. He cites Augustine's Confessions as the great exemplum, and Chrysostom's homilies on repentance. The verse refutes both Donatist rigorism and Lutheran pessimism about free will's role in conversion.
Verse 31
Cast away from you all your transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit: Lapide insists on the active dimension of conversion — 'make yourselves' — in conjunction with the passive reception of divine grace (36:26: 'I will give you a new heart'). He follows the Thomistic synthesis: grace moves the will freely, so that what God gives, man also chooses.
Verse 32
'Nolo mortem morientis, dicit Dominus Deus' — God does not will the death of the sinner: Lapide links this to 1 Tim. 2:4 ('qui omnes homines vult salvos fieri') and develops his anti-Calvinist reading that God's salvific will is universal, not limited to the predestined elect.