To Florus 5.54

Failing to perceive this subtle distinction, Mani produced swarms of advocates of inherited sin for us. He argues as follows: ‘Where does evil come from? From will, of course. Where does evil will come from?’ He answers, ‘From a human being. Where does the human being come from? Through God.’ He concludes: ‘If evil comes from a human being, and the human being through God, evil therefore comes through God.’ Then, as though religiously avoiding making God criminal, he supplies a nature of darkness to which we should attribute evil. Augustine follows: ‘Where does evil come from? From will. Where,’ he asks, ‘does that will itself come from? From a human being, who is God’s work.’ He concludes: ‘If evil comes from will, will from a human being, and the human being is God’s work, evil therefore comes through God.’ As though trying to solve this without appearing to call God criminal—which his doctrine of transmission affirms—he offers us, in God’s place, an equally violent nothing: that is, darkness, to which we should attribute this evil. ‘For evil arose in a human being,’ he says, ‘not because he was God’s work, but because he was from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48).

As though truth could not answer: with what shamelessness does your God first lie that a human being has a will, and then condemn him, when God knows this evil, sin, arose from the necessity of darkness—that is, ancient nothing? I have declined ‘nothing’ through its grammatical cases to display the prowess of the advocate of inherited sin, who places his hope in nothing. But see the weakness of the God he introduces. He could not overcome even nothing. Having made a human being from nothing, he could not free him from the condition of evil that came from nothing. Instead, embittered by the difficulty of affairs, he accuses the human being for his own faults and condemns nothing’s offenses by destroying his own image. Old Mani treats him more kindly, saying that the race of darkness did not ravage him completely. The advocate of inherited sin introduces so great a weakness in God that he invents the claim that God was defeated by nothing.