To Florus 3.13
‘You shall not distort justice for the foreigner, orphan, or widow. You shall not take a widow’s garment as security, because you were a servant in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there. That is why I command you to do this’ (Deuteronomy 24:17–18).
When God established the pattern for judging, he immediately took care to decree that neither parents should be struck down for their children’s crimes nor children for their parents’. He showed, then, that the first principle and starting point of the justice he commanded judges to maintain was this: family ties must not burden the innocent, and the hatred an individual had deserved must not spread to the family itself. In matters of conduct, justice therefore distinguishes those whom kinship joins. It certainly would not do so if will and reproductive seed operated on the same principle, or if an act of choice passed to descendants through reproduction. With this single testimony we have shown, more than sufficiently, that the ancient authority of the enacted law crushes the utterly repulsive corruption of judgment embraced by this new error. This pronouncement bears on the case in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
Latin
Non declinabis iudicium proselyti et orphani et viduae, non accipies pignus vestimentum viduae, quia famulus eras in terra Aegypti et liberavit te Dominus Deus tuus inde; propter hoc ego tibi praecipio facere verbum hoc [n17] . Cum institueret Deus iudicandi formam, hoc statim sancire curavit, ne aut parentes in filiorum aut filii in parentum scelere ferirentur. Principium ergo et ingressum iustitiae, quam servari in iudicatione mandabat, ostendit istud esse, ne affinitas gravaret innoxios et in ipsum genus excurreret odium, quod persona meruisset. In causa ergo actuum discernit iustitia, quos necessitudo coniungit; quod utique non faceret, si una esset ratio voluntatis et seminis aut si opus arbitrii ad posteros fecunditate transiret. Satis ergo superque docuimus hoc uno testimonio taeterrimam istam iudicii pravitatem, quam novus error ample ctitur, antiqua latae legis auctoritate contritam. Quae certe sententia ita est in causam prolata, ut nullum locum reliquerit ambigendi.