To Florus 2.220

Certainly even you are not so senseless as to say that sin transmitted by descent became greater after circumcision. How, then, did it abound after the law when it is neither accused nor revealed in the law? But see how well this agrees with the sound understanding that places sin solely in the wrongdoer’s will. The apostle says sin existed until the law, so that after the law it should be understood as transgression (Romans 5:13): it crosses commands that have been promulgated. In this way sin abounded when the law came in, because transgression added odium to its guilt. The act of an evil will, which before the law was sin, after the law also began to be transgression. Yet God did not give the law with the purpose of making mortals worse through its enactment. For the law is neither sin nor the cause of sin, but ‘the commandment is holy, just, and good’ (Romans 7:12). Wrongdoers’ perversity, however, wounded itself with the blade that should have healed it, and opposed God’s purpose, so that it found danger where it should have found healing. The apostle says that the outcome of events injured the apparent purpose of God’s decision to give the law. Human amendment did not result as the lawgiver intended; rather, the opposite occurred in very many people. He says sinners’ efforts went so far that the law seemed given for no other reason than to make the wicked more wicked and add transgression to sin.