To Florus 1.141

The earth opens to bring forth a shoot before it receives seed through the cultivator's work. This is fulfilled in the Virgin's childbirth: through the gift of motherhood she preceded and excluded the function of a wife. Almighty God promises to do what was not customary. Foreseeing the multitude of unbelievers, he adds: “Woe to one who contradicts his maker, a potsherd among the earth's earthenware!” (Isaiah 45:9). That is: “Woe to those who, despite God's promise, insist that a virgin could not become pregnant! Although every one of them is shaped in a mother's womb from seeds established by God, with God's power intervening, they obstinately insist that flesh could not have been fashioned from the Virgin's flesh without a man's service” (compare Luke 1:34–35).

“You stubborn people, when you think I could not do this and prescribe limits to me because of its difficulty, although you yourselves were plainly made by my hands, you are like clay that, while being worked by its potter, said to him, ‘You have no hands’, the very hands then shaping it into a vessel. So you who ask who gave the Virgin a son without a man's seed must recognize that it is the same one who made you from seed.”

But since Holy Scripture permits varied interpretation, and both explanations have harmonized in a devout and reverent way, let the first book now end. Let its ending nevertheless remind the reader to believe that God is the maker of newborn children, the protector of the innocent, the rewarder of catholics, and the condemner of Manichaeans.