To Florus 3.109
Look: just as we did in the first book, we now press you closely to show how you have not denied free will. Let our reader remember that you have admitted catholics proclaim free will and God as the creator of newborn children—two things no one but a Manichaean ever denied. Yet although we both granted these in common, neither you nor your doctrine leaves freedom of choice intact. It follows completely that you and your doctrine retain nothing of the catholic faith.
I ask, then: what is the power of free will, and what is its definition? Certainly it has no power to change natural conditions. No one ever changed the functions of the senses within himself—for example, receiving sounds through the nose or smells through the ears. No one changed the characteristic of his sex; no one could pass into the form of another animal or, through free will, replace his body hair with a naturally grown fleece. No one could claim a body of whatever quality or size he wished. We may extend these examples to everything falling under this condition.
Let us move, then, from natural things to external circumstances. Whose will controls fruitful fields, successful voyages, noble birth and riches, or the continued standing of that nobility, so that he could say God made him with free will to acquire these or similar things for himself? Natural conditions follow fixed orders; external circumstances are always carried along by uncertain chances.
Where, then, does free will reside—the thing by which humans surpass beasts, by which they were made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27), and on which alone the justice of divine judgment rests? Where, I ask, is this free will, which the Manichaeans certainly deny and which you yourself admit catholics affirm? Undoubtedly in a person’s ability, without any unavoidable compulsion from natural conditions, either to direct his will into wrongdoing or to hold it back from wrongdoing.
Latin
Ecce enim nos, sicut primo libro fecimus, ita nunc presse cogimus, ut ostendas quemadmodum liberum arbitrium non negaris. Insidat autem hoc lectori nostro te videlicet confessum esse liberum arbitrium et Deum nascentium conditorem catholicis praedicare, quae duo numquam nisi Manichaeus negavit; sed cum haec communiter ambo dederimus nec tibi autem nec dogmati tuo libertas constet arbitrii, conficitur omnino te et dogma tuum de fide catholica nihil tenere. Interrogo ergo, quae vis sit quaeve definitio liberi arbitrii. Certe in eius potestate naturalium nulla conversio est. Nemo enim sensuum in se umquam mutavit officia, verbi gratia ut voces naribus aut auribus susciperet odores, nemo sexus sui convertit proprietatem, nemo in formam transire animantis alterius, nemo per liberum arbitrium pilos corporis sui innatis potuit mutare velleribus, nemo sibi pro ingenio aut qualitatem aut quantitatem corporis vindicavit. His exemplis licet omnia, quae ad hanc condicionem respiciunt, pervagari. Transeamus igitur a naturalibus ad externorum discussionem. Cui agrorum fecunditas, cui prosperitas navigationum, cui nobilitas et opes, cui constantia ipsius nobilitatis in iure constitit voluntatis, ut vel ad horum vel ad similium sibi conquisitionem voluntate se libera a Deo effectum esse fateretur? Naturalia ergo inconcussis ordinibus, externa vero casibus semper feruntur incertis. In quibus igitur liberum consistit arbitrium, propter quod homines bestiis antecellunt, propter quod ad Dei imaginem facti sunt et quo solo divini examinis iustitia continetur? In quo est hoc, inquam, arbitrium liberum, quod ut Manichaeos negare certum est, ita catholicos asserere etiam tu fateris? Sine dubio in eo, ut possibile sit homini voluntatem suam sine aliquo inevitabili naturalium coactu vel immittere in crimen vel a crimine cohibere.