To Florus 3.92

It would be an unheard-of monstrosity if someone tried to establish even a tolerable but novel doctrine by abandoning exact expressions for inexact and ambiguous ones. How infinitely more disgraceful, then, that Augustine tries to establish obscene claims accusing God’s justice through statements so double-edged that he admits they speak properly against him and only by indulgence in his favor! What educated person would trust an argument that, once it came to court, his opponent could claim as a slave born in his household, while he himself could possess it only as a runaway he had kidnapped?