To Florus 2.27

I asked, then, in strict logical sequence, as all learning will acknowledge with me, through what sin—the work of an evil will, which is also called the devil’s work—could be found in an infant. Through the will? Even our present opponent admits that no such will has existed in the infant. Through marriage? No one doubts that marriage belongs to the parents’ activity, and he had previously stated that they did not sin in this union (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). If our debater regretted this concession, as the course of his work indicated, he should admit that the parents are guilty, since their union prepares a kingdom for the devil over God’s image. I added, by the necessary steps of argument, that original sin makes the devil the creator of bodies. For if evil comes into human beings through their origin, and the devil’s right over human beings comes through evil, the devil is the maker of human beings, since the origin of those born comes from him. Realizing that these arguments would imprison the advocates of inherited sin in the Manichaeans’ cave, I turned the key to give the captives a way out. I warned him that, if he truly believed human beings were made by God and sincerely confessed married people innocent, he should understand that original sin cannot be derived from them. ‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘the one born does not sin, the one who fathered the child does not sin, and the one who created the child does not sin. Through what cracks, amid so many defenses of innocence, do you imagine sin has entered?’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.47). What, I ask, could have been framed more reverently, truthfully, clearly, briefly, and firmly than my drawing a fourth proposition—the decisive conclusion—from the three premises my opponent had conceded? Sometimes one or two premises necessarily establish a third. By what rule, then, should I be forbidden to infer the fourth proposition that follows from three admitted premises? And this is only in the second argument. In the first, five or more points are conceded to me, after which a valid and undefeated conclusion follows.