To Florus 5.25

To avoid the odium of this name, your mention of various heresies is entirely futile. You say: ‘Just as Arians call catholics Sabellians, although catholics distinguish the persons clearly while preserving their common nature, so you impose the Manichaeans’ name on us, although we do not say marriage is evil, as Manichaeans do, but say evil passes into all human beings as a condition of nature’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.23.38). I have no doubt the wise will laugh at these arguments. Arians falsely call catholics Sabellians, since we distinguish the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without any confusion or change of substance, while they very stupidly slander us as though one and three were no different. Likewise, catholics most rightly declare you Manichaeans, because your creed compels us to say so.

Manichaeans assert natural sin; you say it is natural. They say the devil planted bodily desire; you confirm this through extended argument. They contend that evil cannot be avoided through free will because it is natural. With the same words you too invent a free will through which evil can be done, but evil cannot be abandoned. Mani says seed is cursed; you try to prove it by scriptural authority. Mani says wickedness cannot be changed; you shout that it is so. But you say Adam alone possessed a better nature. Mani too, writing to Patricius, says Adam should be believed better than those who followed, as though formed from the flower of the first substance. You say intercourse is diabolical because of its natural movements, and human beings are rightly plucked by the devil like fruit from a shrub he planted. Mani says this too: he is, indeed, the one from whom you learned to believe and affirm it. Mani says both nature and marriage are evil. You say marriage is good but nature guilty. You are not more religious here; he is more intelligent.

Just as it is false when Arians say catholics are Sabellians, then, it is entirely true when catholics say advocates of inherited sin are nothing other than Manichaeans. The illusory distinction between you arises not from your creed but from your ignorance. You and Mani therefore hold one faith, but he proves less shameless than your distinguished self. For one does not readily meet either a Manichaean or another Melitides who says he condemns human nature without slandering marriage.