To Florus 3.46

So you are angry with me because I believe God under oath rather than Mani dreaming! Especially since Mani produces no testimonies of sound faith, or even arguments of an alert intelligence. Such arguments could never be found strong enough to overthrow truth’s foundations; still, if aptly expressed, they might at least offer some immediate relief from the shame of stupidity.

God persists in strengthening by an oath what he had made sacred by a command. He goes on to make his decree plain through examples. Suppose, he says, a man maintains every form of justice with unstained devotion and fathers a son who clings to corrupt behavior and turns away from his father’s paths. The noble standing acquired by his father’s great devotion to justice does that son no good. Conversely, he presents this sinner’s son avoiding his father’s ways by a better decision, and shows that his parent’s iniquity does him no harm. He places justice and sin on an equal footing, asserting that parents’ vices no more travel through reproductive seed than virtues can. All souls belong to his authority. This also exposes the irreverence of your claim that newborn children’s souls and bodies belong to the devil’s dominion.