To Florus 3.50
But perhaps you will try to deceive simpler hearers with this quibble: God was speaking here about adults, saying that their parents’ crimes do not harm those children who have canceled natural evil by the holiness of their own deeds. We must show that this trick accomplishes nothing. God has prescribed without qualification that parents’ iniquity does not condemn innocent children, but each person is convicted by personal iniquities; a faithful mind cannot doubt this. Still, let us handle again the corpse of your opinion, pierced by so many thunderbolts of the law. How far do you think this divine argument should extend? Does it mean that parents’ offenses harm neither adult nor newborn children? Or that they are prevented from harming only those already older and practicing justice, while little children, before draining away the natural poison through their own justice, are burdened by their parents’ crime—so that the very thing God denied through the prophet actually happens (Ezekiel 18:19–20)?
Latin
Sed ne forte simpliciorum auribus tali cavillo coneris illudere, ut dicas Deum hic de his, qui perfectae sunt aetatis, locutum, id est ut illis filiis parentum crimina diceret non nocere, qui naturale malum operum suorum sanctitate vacuassent, osten dendum est nihil hanc promovere fraudem. Quamvis enim absolute praescripserit Deus, quoniam iniquitas parentum non addicat filios innocentes, sed unusquisque propriis iniquitatibus arguatur nec hinc fidelis animus possit ambigere, tamen, ut opinionis tuae confossum tot fulminibus legis retractemus cadaver, quatenus accipiendam hanc Dei disputationem putabis, videlicet ut parentum sicut nec adultis ita nec nascentibus filiis obsint delicta? An, ut tantummodo iam grandioris aetatis et iustitiam operantibus non sinantur nocere, parvulos autem, antequam per propriam iustitiam naturale virus exhauriant, scelere generantium gravari, sicque fiat quod per Prophetam Deus futurum negavit?