To Florus 1.73

Let us now proceed to my words, which he lifted out of the preface and proposed to attack. “I have therefore given sufficient warning that this man chose to set my words before himself for apparent refutation in such a way that in some places he interrupted statements by removing their middle, and in others shortened them by not adding their ending. I have also sufficiently shown why he did this. Now let us see what words of his he set against those of ours that he presented as he wished. For his words now follow. As the person who sent you the sheet explained, he first copied something from the preface, undoubtedly the preface to those books from which he made a few excerpts. It runs as follows: ‘The teachers of our time, most blessed brother, and the authors of the wicked revolt that is still raging, have resolved to reach the abuse and destruction of men whose holy efforts inflame them, through the ruin of the whole Church. They do not understand how much honor they have bestowed on those whose glory they have shown could not be torn down except together with the catholic religion. For if anyone says that human beings have free choice or that God is the Creator of newborn children, he is called a follower of Caelestius and Pelagius. To avoid being called heretics, people become Manichaeans. Fearing a false disgrace, they incur a real crime, like wild animals surrounded by feathers to force them into nets. Lacking reason, they are driven by an empty fear into actual destruction’” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.6–7).

I recognize my words, but you have not quoted them intact. Although the substance of our dispute does not lie in these words, because they come from a preface, let your carelessness be made plain. “Most blessed brother” is not placed there but in the very first line of the book. Again, after saying, “to reach the abuse and destruction of men whose holy efforts inflame them”, I added, “since no other route lay open, they resolved to do so through the ruin of the whole Church.” After that I also said: “Because anyone who acknowledges free choice and God as Creator is called a follower of Caelestius and Pelagius, simple people, terrified by this unjust language, abandon even sound faith to escape the hatred of the name. They will undoubtedly come to believe both that human beings have no free choice and that God is not the Creator of newborn children, once they have abandoned the two claims they had previously affirmed.” You omitted all of this. After it come the words you quoted; it will not be difficult to prove how true and unassailable they are. I therefore omitted nothing from your statements, while you did not even reproduce the first passage in the order in which I had arranged it. I emphasize this so that the African author's seriousness may stand out.