To Florus 6.21

It is therefore perfectly clear that Augustine differs in nothing from his teacher. His arguments define Adam’s nature as utterly evil no less than everyone else’s. To discuss further with him what we have treated, it appears that you do not even consider the first sin the same kind as other faults. You say later ages’ crimes cannot pass into nature—for example, that children born from an embezzler, a parent-murderer, or an incestuous person are not born liable for their parents’ sins—and that no crime except that one is mixed into reproductive seed. You therefore show with complete openness that you do not consider that disobedience of the same kind as the rest.

See how brief and clear our question is. If Adam’s sin was adopted voluntarily and could become natural, why are the sins committed every day by a criminal will not piled into the deformity and prejudicial condition of reproductive seed? If these sins, no less atrocious and more numerous, cannot be implanted at birth, by what law, condition, or special privilege is that one alone claimed to be inborn? If the sins we know, which law condemns and fairness punishes, are of the same kind as the first human’s sin, committed voluntarily and punished justly, why do we not understand these from that one, or that one from these? If they cannot testify to one another, how can anyone shamelessly deny that the first transgression was of another condition—produced not by will but by natural corruption?

Finally, while maintaining inherited sin, dare to define any sin. I do not mean the first; for now take one committed today—sacrilege, a shameful act, or some evil crime. Explain the definition of these sins. You will undoubtedly say: It is a will seeking what justice forbids and from which it is free to abstain; if there were no evil will, there could be no sin. Observe how reasonably we rise against this. What dullness, what intolerable shamelessness! You define sin as nothing but a free will forbidden by justice, while the theory of natural evil lays down that there is an involuntary sin with which a human is born. Then it is not true that only what is freely committed is a fault, since there is a crime—and the greatest one—received not voluntarily but by birth.

Give back, then, the definition of sin that is friendly to catholics and does not turn aside to lodge with you even as a guest. Having relinquished it, prove that you are not a fellow soldier of those who attack substance itself with the stigma of wickedness. To gather our conclusions: either no sin will be shown voluntary if any sin is natural, or none will be natural if every sin is defined as voluntary. Consequently, either deny that sin can be born and come over to catholic faith, or, if you persist that not merely some sin but the greatest crime is received through nature without will, give your name too to Mani, whom you obey in everything.