To Florus 5.57

The good capacity for evil and good therefore does not compel will to arise, but permits it. No one is good merely because he is endowed with free will: many people are equally free yet utterly evil. Nor is anyone evil because he has free will: many equally share this freedom yet are excellent. A human being is thus neither good nor evil because he is free, but could be neither good nor evil unless he were free. This capacity, indicated by the name freedom, was so established by the supremely wise God that without it there cannot be what is not compelled to exist through it. Its single capacity for opposites protects it from predetermination toward either. That is, it cannot be called the cause or necessity of either an evil or a good will, since it receives both without compelling either to exist. Necessary things therefore have a single course and, as it were, one thread: like geometry’s length without breadth. Its unity cannot be divided. As long as it extends singly, it retains the force of its own nature; but where it meets something divided toward different directions, that necessity immediately ends. That is: the good God made the human being good.