To Florus 4.59

To confirm a plain matter by an example: it is better to possess reason than not to possess it. Human beings were made rational, while animals were made irrational. Yet because human nature surpasses four-footed animals, those animals must not therefore be called an evil or the devil’s work. Suppose, then, that when Christ formed his own members, he chose not to mingle with them a sensation of the reproductive organs that he would not use. When he formed the members of Isaac, Jacob, and everyone else, giving them both sex and sensation, was he therefore doing something evil? Or did he call the devil to help when he came to these things, so that the devil might mingle necessary pleasures into the members Christ himself had assembled? As I have shown, with God’s help, both in this work and in the earlier one, you have obtained absolutely nothing, however small, against the divine works through the person of Christ. For it has become clear that the Savior’s body lacked nothing belonging to human nature.