To Florus 4.1

I think an attentive reader may wonder why, although I have divided my little work into a definite number of books, as writers customarily do, I nevertheless settle in one book questions belonging to another. For example, in the third volume I argued that the statement that the Jewish people descended from the one man Abraham (Hebrews 11:12) did not in the slightest shake the apostle’s meaning when he said that sin entered the world through one man (Romans 5:12), a numerical expression that demolished the opinion of original evil. The reader whom I now intend to satisfy may think this should have been placed in the second volume. Let him understand, then, that this faithfulness in replying, by which even things thought to have been passed over are supplied in the following book, causes no disadvantage to the contest. It comes not from confusion caused by haste, but both from the requirements of the subject and from a considered plan. Many great minds offer examples that could justify such a sequence of writing. But it is foolish boasting to call on the resounding names of ancient writers to defend a simple matter, and to make an innocent action look suspicious by defending it.

I therefore ended the second book, which I had devoted to defending the apostle’s statements, when the necessary discussion was complete, so that adding trivial questions would not stretch it to excessive length. But after fulfilling the duty of serious argument, I chose to answer even foolish questions and to take account of the very slowest readers, who can be disturbed even by feeble objections. Accordingly, in the third book I showed how many people could be said to have been born from one. It is also entirely fitting for a following volume to discharge the debt of its predecessor: the books then show a strong agreement with one another, and readers are encouraged to learn the whole work. Even if they consider that some points were postponed in the earlier books, they understand that they were not omitted. Having shown, then, that what we have done accords with the work’s faithfulness and care, let us fight the Manichaeans on behalf of God’s works and laws. From his works we repel the ugliness of natural evil; from his laws, the injustice of deadly judgments. We teach that in the commands of those laws justice has lost none of its goodness, and into the seeds of those works the devil has mixed none of his evil. In short, the laws are worthy of God as ruler, and the works supremely worthy of God as creator.