To Florus 1.88

He made plain the slavery of which he was speaking: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34). How forcefully this very statement opposes your error! He says that no one is a slave of sin except someone who has himself committed sin, and that sin cannot cling to anyone unless the person in question has personally committed it, either in action or even by will alone. How clearly he also shows that the whole human race cannot now be possessed by the devil, when he distinguishes between slave and son, that is, between the just and the unjust! Here Christ separated not only himself but each of the saints from the condition of slaves. Such people existed both before and during the Old Testament; he declares that they remain in his Father's house and rejoice at his table (Luke 13:28–29). This whole kind of exhortation would have been pointlessly spoken if he were not addressing people with free choice.