To Florus 6.18

But by the faithfulness of our God and of humanity! Could such monstrous inventions really have been devised, deliberately and laboriously trying to assert everything upside down? What could be more monstrous than what the Carthaginian says? Things that were natural, he says, did not endure; things adopted by choice adhered to the first formation of the bodily members.

Adam, he says, was made good and possessed natural innocence. Raised above other creatures by a special nobility, he shone with his Creator’s likeness (Genesis 1:26–27). He received free will in his created condition, to move by his own judgment in whatever direction he wished. Through the very condition of his making, which set him above the rest, he obtained the ability to approach either good or evil and withdraw from either. But because he used his independent judgment to adopt a corrupt inclination of the free mind, he overthrew all those admittedly inborn things; only sin and the necessity of sinning clung to him inseparably.

This is what I called a monstrous invention. It is an unheard-of disgrace to say: A living being was well made in whom even natural goods could be lost, while even voluntary evils clung inseparably.