To Florus 4.128

Having explained God’s patience and his most gentle ordering of things, by which he does not desire the death of the dying person but rather that he turn back and live (compare Ezekiel 18:32; 33:11), the writer continues to prove what he said by examples. He mentions those whose terribly wicked lives in the land of Canaan had kindled the Almighty’s anger, so that the land would be granted, through the most just punishment, to the victories of the Israelites, now living under God’s law. “Hating those ancient inhabitants of your holy land, because they did hateful deeds before you through spells and unjust sacrifices, and were merciless killers of children, you willed to destroy them through our fathers’ hands, so that the land dearest to you of all lands might receive a worthy settlement of God’s children” (Wisdom 12:3–7) (Ezekiel 18:32).

He testifies why God wished the seven nations to perish, after whose destruction for the most part the promised land was given to the Israelites (compare Deuteronomy 7:1–2). Lest God appear to distinguish persons by partiality within one human nature, he explains why the Canaanites deserved to be killed. “You hated,” he says, “those ancient inhabitants of your holy land.” (Ezekiel 33:11) Why? According to you, he should certainly have added: because they were generated from a devilish union; because the ruler of darkness possessed them; because Adam infected everyone who would come from his stock. But he says none of these things. What reason does he give for the hatred? Only deeds committed through free will. “You hated them,” he says, “because they did deeds hateful to you.” (Deuteronomy 7:1–2)

But so that we would not be ignorant of the deeds, and so that you could not call these acts of the nations reproductive desire, he details the kinds of action themselves. “Through spells,” he says, “and unjust sacrifices; and they were merciless killers of children.” That is, they served sorcery and sacrifices that were unjust because they were offered to idols, after worship of the Creator had been abandoned. To these sacrileges they devoted their own relatives, appeasing demons even by the enormity of murdering their children. See, then, how far he is from speaking of the crime Manichaeus invents, a crime naturally adhering to every mortal. He recalls that their chief offense was that they did not refrain even from destroying their own little children. Those children’s deaths would not bring odium on the killer if both the murderer and the child displeased God because of one and the same sin.