To Florus 4.123

But let us examine the rest. I think the reader has been instructed more than enough by what we have treated about the strength with which he either attacks anything in my statements or defends his own opinion. It will therefore not be necessary to demonstrate this by repeating all his writings. For he puts before himself scarcely more than isolated, scattered little lines from my book, often praising them and sometimes tickling them with the briefest criticism. Yet what he thinks he should bite at was not said by me in the way he supposes. I therefore direct the reader to my work: he will see that its argument agrees with truth.

This man, who complained that I accused him of attacking nature and seeds, could not endure continuous pretense. After soothing his patron’s hearing with tricks, he puts out his head like a tortoise. He had said that, unless Adam had sinned, people could have generated children as we ordinarily move our joints or trim our nails. Then he added: “But if the seed itself carries no curse, what does this passage in the book of Wisdom mean? ‘You were not ignorant that their race was wicked, that their malice was natural, and that their thought could never be changed; for they were a cursed seed from the beginning’” (Wisdom 12:10–11). He follows the testimony with this argument: “Surely, whoever these words concern, they concern human beings” (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.6.17–2.9.21).

Here is the man who professed to have abandoned Manichaean pursuits! Taking an opportunity from a statement he does not understand, he pronounces the seed cursed, malice natural, and the thought of the unjust incapable of change. It is said that those living beside the Nile’s cataracts have lost their hearing from the roar of the falling waters. Perhaps rumor invented that, spreading larger tales from great things. Still, the example serves to rebuke the deafness of fools who resist the voice of facts like deaf adders, amid the din of mutual intimidation (compare Psalm 58:4–5; LXX Psalm 57:5–6). Augustine cries: “The human race is wicked; its malice is natural; its thought forever unchangeable; its seed cursed from the beginning.” And there are still people who think he has not been stamped all over with Manichaeus’s mark! Let the public followers of that filth be questioned today. If they say anything different, let us be judged liars.

So if malice is natural, how do you pretend not to pronounce nature evil? If the seed is cursed from the beginning, how do you say you accuse the vices of wills, not of seeds? If evildoers’ thought cannot be changed, how do you falsely swear that you acknowledge free choice? Unless the only thing left is for you to say that those Hebrews, Sirach or Philo, who are uncertainly believed to have authored the book called Wisdom, were Manichaeans.