To Florus 1.2

As soon as I had room to breathe, however, I intended to fulfill my promises as briefly as the subject itself would allow. But you, most blessed Father Florus, wanted me to undertake a more demanding task once again. Your holiness commands such reverence that I consider it irreligious to obey your instructions sluggishly; you therefore had little difficulty persuading me to lengthen the short route I had chosen. Give your support, then, to a work undertaken at your command. I have placed your name in it chiefly so that my pen may advance more confidently and cheerfully under the protection of so weighty an instruction. There was a sound reason for the brevity I had planned. In those four books, the truth of the catholic faith, for which and with which we incur the hatred of a world in decline, had crushed almost everything invented by the Manichaeans and spoken against us by Augustine. Armed both with unanswerable arguments and with the testimony of the sacred Law, it had left almost nothing outstanding, if only we had fair judges.