To Florus 5.7

Passing over these points, then, he accuses me of not saying ‘with lust.’ He adds, as befits his doctrine’s sharpness: ‘The fruitful production of children is a gift to the devout, not the shameful union of bodily parts. A healthy nature would not have had this in begetting children, but that same nature, now corrupted, does have it. Consequently, the one born from it needs to be reborn’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.25). How consistent it all is! He calls children’s existence a gift to the devout, but places under the devil what he affirms God gives: the children. Sexual desire, however, which is in the shameful union of bodily parts, he calls diabolical. He does not deny its presence in the parents, yet acquits them of guilt. Would you say this man was born of a human being? What the parents do, he says, is diabolical, yet they are not guilty. What the children are by being born is God’s work, yet they are guilty. And he still thinks he has fought the demon rather than God! Those who think sin is natural thoroughly deserve to suffer this madness.