To Florus 2.186

Those to whom a law was not given should thus be understood not to have transgressed commands. Yet they are convicted as guilty because, neglecting the reason to which each person’s own feelings bear witness, they violated the rights of human society or of decency. They are therefore said to have sinned by imitating one another, but not by transgressing a law not yet given. Until the law, then, there was sin, not transgression; after the law, not only sin but also transgression. Eternal death reigned, which God had promised to assign to Adam if he sinned (Genesis 2:17). Thus that death owed to sin, that punitive death, reigned before the law over those who sinned: for example, the Sodomites, those destroyed at the time of the flood, and people of various ages destroyed because of wickedness—voluntary wickedness, however (Genesis 6:5–7; Genesis 7:21–23; Genesis 19:24–25). It also reigned after the law over those it found guilty of transgression.