To Florus 5.35

What soundness! What elegance in a debater! ‘Evil arose in a human being,’ he says, ‘not because he was made by God, but because he was made from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48). We have already shown the sharpness by which immense power is assigned to this nothing. Now I point out what the preceding debate also made clear: not even the first evil was undertaken by the sinner’s will if the condition of an origin from nothing required its birth.