To Florus 4.20

For the apostle John was urging the faithful toward the summit of every virtue and stretching their pursuit of holiness to the height of the Lord’s manner of life. To be brief, he embraced under the name of the whole world every attraction of present goods and pleasures: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love is not in him, because everything in the world is the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not from the Father but from the world. The world passes away, and its desire; but whoever does God’s will remains forever” (1 John 2:15–17). If we look only at the surface of the words, he commands hatred of all the elements and declares that the world and everything in it are not from the Father and should not be loved.