To Florus 2.113

Although what we have already accomplished more than suffices to defend the truth, I nevertheless urge the reader to attend to what we add. It will appear irrefutably that in these passages the apostle Paul discussed not human nature but human conduct. Setting the power of Christ’s grace and of the first sin opposite each other, and comparing the effects of both, he worked to show that Christ’s mystery helped more than the first man’s sin harmed. We have shown that this cannot hold under the interpretation of inherited transmission. Among the many points he listed, then, he intended this especially to praise grace: ‘The judgment was from one offense to condemnation, but grace is from many offenses to justification of life’ (Romans 5:16). The defender of natural evil explained this as follows: ‘It says “from one offense to condemnation” because that one sin inherited at birth is sufficient to lead to condemnation, as it leads infants born from Adam unless they are reborn in Christ, even if there are no other sins. “But grace is from many offenses to justification,” because it forgives not only the sin inherited at birth but also the other sins each person adds by the movement of his own will’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). See: you have professed, though with Manichaean impiety, that natural sin exists, but that it is one sin, on account of which you say newborn children must be condemned.