To Florus 1.68

These matters were discussed at greater length in my first work. Yet you do not speak clearly about which death you mean when you say that its body did not exist in paradise before sin, since in the books published under Marcellinus's name you acknowledged that Adam was made mortal (Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.3–4). As for your addition that the business of marriage is a disease, that can be heard calmly if you say it only about your own parents. Perhaps you know of some hidden disease of your mother's, whom you recorded in the Confessions as having been called, to use the very word, a wine-tippler (Augustine, Confessions 9.18). But in the marriages of the saints and of all honorable people there is no disease whatsoever. Nor did the apostle allow a disease as a remedy when, through respect for marriage, he protected the people of the Church from the disease of fornication (compare 1 Corinthians 7:2). Near the end of my first book I show how completely that meaning wipes out both your effrontery and your doctrine. I also explained it throughout the whole body of that reply as the occasion arose.