To Florus 5.63

Let the discerning reader therefore hold firmly in mind the great difference between what comes from possibility and what comes from necessity. Let him assign all natural things to the necessary, all voluntary things to the possible, and conclude every question on the same side on which it began. If he wanders blindly through both, almost every word plunges him into countless errors. Since this has been made sufficiently clear, you plainly groped in deep darkness when you concluded: ‘Just as evil which existed nowhere could arise in God’s work, so evil already existing passed naturally through God’s work.’ See the error entangling you. You say sin conceived by the first will, which comes from possibility, was changed into something necessary: just as a free movement of the mind could arise, so without a free movement it could pass into the necessity of natural things.

Understand, however, that God is the author of necessary things. If God does in natures what the mind did in sins, he must be guilty in the same way as the one whose will he accuses. Indeed, more guilty: as necessity exceeds possibility, so engendering sin is more criminal than committing it. Although the nature of things does not admit this, I have shown here that your opinion of God is much worse than Mani’s. At least sudden wars mutilated Mani’s God; ancient and multiplied crimes corrupted yours. Consequently, you differ from catholics not merely over a question but over God himself. You do not worship the one whom we venerate in the Trinity as supremely just, supremely powerful, and inviolable.

A matter of will therefore could not pass through nature. We rightly said that the devil’s work is not permitted to pass through God’s work. The devil’s and an evil human being’s work is sin, which can exist in no one without a movement of free will. This work has come and comes to devil and human being from possibility. God’s work, however, is nature, in which a human being exists not by possibility but by necessity. This nature exists for long periods without will, since will’s power is felt at a particular age. As long as nature exists without will, it is solely God’s work; it cannot possess a sin it has not committed. It was therefore said irrefutably that the devil’s work is not permitted to pass through God’s work.

Your statement, ‘The work of God’s work passes through God’s work,’ is as false as it is impious. It amounts to saying, ‘God sins too, because the human being God made sinned.’ For sin exists nowhere except in a human being’s action. When a human being sins, nothing is added to his substance so that sin can be seen projecting there. The evil deed committed from an evil will simply acquires evil desert for the doer too, so that the one who did evil is called evil. Likewise, if your God made evil in his work, nothing is added to his substance, just as nothing is added to a human being’s; but he acquires the most disgraceful desert and is called evil by doing evil. Even then, however, the infant is proved not guilty, since he possesses evil by necessity, whereas even the devil could not be guilty unless he possessed it by possibility. But the true God of Christians does not do evil. Before the determination of its own will, an infant possesses nothing except what God has made within it. No natural sin can therefore exist. Since we have most carefully broken open the ancient error’s caves and nothing about this question remains hidden, let the attentive reader retain the distinction between necessity and possibility. He will laugh at the inventions of Manichaeans and advocates of inherited sin alike.