To Florus 2.185

‘For until the law, sin was in this world; but sin was not imputed when there was no law. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of the one to come’ (Romans 5:13–14). Through different terms he distinguishes kinds of sin, showing that sin is one thing and transgression another. At least in this passage, he intends every transgression to be regarded as sin, but not every sin as transgression. The term ‘transgression’ increases the odium of sin, so that those who crossed a command appear more guilty than those who sinned without the law’s warning by disregarding their inborn reason. Therefore, before the law given through Moses and committed to writing—whose enactment prescribed a pattern of conduct that people living under it were not permitted to ignore—the apostle accuses mortals stained with various forms of corrupt activity of sin, not transgression: those living in the interval between Adam and Moses.