To Florus 5.60

But why turn to infants, when the Manichaeans’ question does not allow even an adult to sin by will? If evil arose in a human being because he was made from nothing, and he necessarily received his making from nothing, he undoubtedly received evil from necessity, not possibility. Although lengthy argument has destroyed this, let us discuss the same point a little longer, so that repetition makes it increasingly clear. You ask where the evil will itself existed in the first man. I answer: from a movement of the mind under no compulsion. You ask where that movement itself came from. I answer: what are you asking? Where it could come from, or from what it was compelled to exist? If you say, as you also wrote, ‘From what it was compelled to exist,’ I reply that your words are inconsistent and contradictory. You ask who compelled something that cannot exist except under no compulsion. This dissolves through its own contradiction; a question without order has no force.

You therefore ask with great foolishness where the evil will itself comes from. By ‘where,’ you ask not its occasion but its origin, that is, its nature. Yet, as discussed above, if it receives a nature, it loses its own definition, which says ‘under no compulsion’; if it retains its definition, it excludes predetermination by birth. The human being therefore sinned not because he was made from nothing, not because he was made by God, not because he was made from darkness, and not because he was made with free will. He sinned because he willed: that is, he had an evil will because he willed.