Marriage 2.27.44

Through what, then, is sin found in the infant? Through the will? The infant had none. Through marriage? But marriage belongs to the parents’ activity, and you had already said that they did not sin in this act—although, from what follows, it appears you had not really granted that. Are the marriages themselves therefore to be cursed because they caused the evil? Yet they indicate only the activity of the persons involved. The parents, then, who caused sin through their union, are rightly subject to condemnation.

If we follow your view, there can now be no doubt that married people are handed over to eternal punishment, since their activity brought about the devil’s rule over human beings. And where is the statement you made a little earlier, that the human being is God’s work? For if evil enters people through their origin, and the devil gains authority over people through that evil, you are calling the devil the maker of human beings, since from him comes the origin of those being born. But if you believe that God makes the human being and that married people are innocent, see how impossible it is to maintain that original sin is derived from them.