To Florus 4.6

Although this was established there with the fullest possible treatment, it must also be repeated, briefly, in the present discussion. Let us turn, then, to the man himself, whose learning we are contesting. You agree, surely, that I reasoned correctly: if offspring exist only through sex, sex only through a body, and a body only through God, there can be no doubt that fertility belongs among God’s works. The ruler of darkness recognizes nothing of his own in the sexes by which he could keep their offspring as his rightful property. For their difference belonged to sex, their union to the difference of their organs, and the fruit of fertility to God, who had also established those who generate offspring. Accordingly, nothing remained for which the fertility of sexual union should be awarded to the devil.

What comfort or defense, then, do you think the decency of my language gives you because I did not wish to name the desire of the flesh in this passage? Even if I had passed it over in silence throughout the whole work, that would have brought no blame or injury upon the thing itself. It was being defended under more decent names, and indeed in language perfectly clear to the understanding. Suppose, then, that with more reserve than the subject required I had chosen to veil in silence the name of what we cover with clothing. Must all reason and all truth therefore be thrown away? Must understanding, the judge of matters, therefore lie helpless because there is something that cannot always be brought decently before the ears, just as it cannot always be brought before the eyes? Yet what is ugly about naming the desire of the flesh? I have named it when the occasion required, and you mention it frequently, although you insist that you find it untamable.