To Florus 4.58

So here, as in everything, you have spoken most profanely in saying that what belongs to human nature was absent from Christ’s flesh. You drew this, deceived, not from any sound vein of Scripture but solely from Manichaean filth. Yet to display a greater abundance of resources for defending truth, let us grant your dream that the desire of the flesh you speak of was absent from Christ. This was certainly condemned first in Manichaean and afterward in Apollinarist frenzy. But what support could it give your doctrine? It would not immediately follow that something was evil if he had chosen not to assume it. Since good things rise by degrees in worth, one could say that he proceeded through the best without condemning goods placed below him by choosing those above. Just as he did not defame marriage by following virginity, so he would not have condemned the sensation of the reproductive flesh even if he had been unwilling to possess its capacity in his own substance.