To Florus 3.57

If this age has any time left, who will be able to believe the written record that there existed a man who believed and swore that what was natural was not natural, that what belonged to generation did not belong to generation, and that what affected certain people solely because they were parents did not belong to the condition of parents? I think a future generation will consider these claims invented rather than defended by any mortal.

These are the lurchings, nausea, and vomitings your party and belief undergo. You say: Parents’ sins cannot flow to their children through nature, because an act of choice is not bound to reproductive seed; but Adam’s sin, conceived by his will, passes through nature to all people, because an act of choice is bound to reproductive seed. Again: God does not condemn children for their parents’ sins, because that is the height of injustice; but he condemns Adam’s descendants for their parents’ sin, which no justice can defend. Finally: What applied to Adam only because he fathered children under the law of marriage does not belong to the condition of generation by which spouses become parents.

Is this steering a course, or floundering? Is this digesting an argument, or feeling sick? Is this taking in anything solid, or constantly vomiting? In the same words you affirm what you denied; in the same lines you deny what you affirmed. And you are angry that we do not submit to a man so shattered by serious illness that he cannot retain what he takes in!