To Florus 6.20

What parasite ever flattered a boastful soldier’s strength as the advocate of inherited sin flatters the devil’s? This can be recognized by weighing their respective influences. God made the human being, handling the very material of clay with an awe-inspiring condescension, as it followed its author’s hand into human shape. The completed image stood there, still pale and cold, awaiting the breath through which it would shine and live. Then the soul, created and breathed in by the author’s most august breath, stirred the inward parts it filled. Every sense awakened to prepare for its own tasks. The entering inhabitant gave color to the inward parts, warmth to the blood, vigor to the limbs, brightness to the skin. See the work divine goodness undertook in forming and animating humanity (Genesis 2:7)!

Yet the Creator’s closeness did not abandon him once complete. He was transferred to a more delightful place; the one God had mercifully made he generously enriched. Nor, content with this, did God stop there: he enlightened him by sharing conversation. He gave him a command so that, understanding his freedom, he might see the means at hand to become closer to his Creator. The command was not stretched into many provisions, lest a multiplied law impose a burden. The prohibition of one small fruit sought evidence of devotion. Later, so that he might have a companion through whom to become a father, he was ennobled again by the touch of the hand that made him. Divine conversation continued to cherish and honor him (Genesis 2:8–25).

These divine provisions—so prolonged, so many, so great: arrangements, gifts, commands, conversations—created no necessity of good in humanity. On the other side, however, the devil, as timid as he was crafty, exchanged a few words with the woman. Those words are said to have had such power that they immediately became a natural condition—indeed, overthrew every inborn thing, created perpetual necessity of evil, and imposed the devil as lord and possessor over God’s image.

What, then, is stronger, more excellent, more magnificent than the hostile power, if with a slight conversation it accomplished what God could obtain neither by his works nor by his gifts? Plainly you stand on the side of the one whose power you proclaim so excessively. You have no share in worshiping our God, whom we acknowledge as both perfectly fair and all-powerful: ‘He is mighty, and truth surrounds him’ (Genesis 3:1–6); he humbles the proud one as a wounded man—that is, the devil and Mani, and you their followers, who slander nature to avoid admitting that you sin voluntarily. Our God, then, ‘scatters his enemies by the strength of his arm’ (Psalm 89:8, 10; LXX/Vulgate Psalm 88:9, 11) (Genesis 1:26–27). Thus neither you nor the Manichaeans could bring forward anything that the thunderbolt of his truth did not shatter (Psalm 89:8, 10).