To Florus 2.63

But the apostle’s words plainly do not have the sequence our enemy imagined. His argument runs like this: ‘If the apostle had meant imitation,’ he says, ‘he would have said that sin entered through the devil and passed through all human beings, rather than “through one man” (Romans 5:12). For Scripture says of the devil: “Those who belong to his party imitate him” (Wisdom 2:24; Latin numbering 2:25). But he said “through one man,” from whom the generation of human beings certainly began, precisely to teach that original sin passed through all people by generation’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.45). His falsehood, then, lies in affirming that blessed Paul declared that sin entered the world through one man and so passed into all human beings. This, I repeat, is not found in the Teacher of the Gentiles’ words. Paul did not say sin passed on, but death. The sequence is: ‘Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so it passed into all human beings, in whom all sinned’ (Romans 5:12). The church’s exalted teacher weighed what he should say: ‘Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so it passed into all human beings.’ He had already named both death and sin. Why, in speaking of what passed on, did he need to separate death from association with sin? Why expressly show that sin entered this world through one man, and death through sin, but that what passed into all human beings was not sin but death—death imposed by the severity of judgment, avenging transgression, pursuing not bodily seed but moral faults? Surely because he took care to commend and safeguard his meaning, so that no one would suppose he had given any support to your doctrine.