To Florus 2.69

But let us proceed to what remains, so that the unfolding of the apostle’s sacred discourse may show which doctrine he agrees with, as has already largely become clear. You write: ‘What else do the apostle’s following words indicate? After saying this he added: “Until the law, sin was in the world”—that is, because not even the law could remove sin. “But sin was not reckoned when there was no law” (Romans 5:13). It therefore existed but was not reckoned, because it was not disclosed so that it could be reckoned. As he says elsewhere: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). “But death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses”—the same as his earlier “until the law.” Not until Moses as though sin ceased thereafter, but because not even the law given through Moses could remove death’s reign, which certainly reigns only through sin. Its reign consists in hurling a mortal human being into the second death also, which is everlasting (Revelation 20:14; Revelation 21:8). “But it reigned.” Over whom? “Even over those,” he says, “who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of the one to come” (Romans 5:14). Of which coming one, if not Christ? And what sort of figure, if not one by contrast? As he also says elsewhere: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). As the one thing is in the first, so the other is in the second: that is the figure. But this figure does not correspond in every respect. Therefore the apostle went on to add here: “But the gift is not like the offense. For if through the one man’s offense many died, much more did God’s grace and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to many” (Romans 5:15). What does “abound much more” mean? Because everyone who is freed through Christ dies a temporal death on account of Adam, but will live without end on account of Christ himself’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.46). You have asserted that the apostle’s subsequent words indicate nothing other than original sin. But we have proved that he did not indicate it even at the beginning, since he specified that sin passed through one, not through two.