To Florus 4.129

“Yet even these,” he says, “you spared as human beings, and sent wasps ahead of the army—not because you lacked the power to subject the impious to the righteous in battle, but, judging little by little, you gave them room for repentance” (Wisdom 12:8–10) (Genesis 9:20–27). “You pricked even those sacrilegious people,” he says in effect, “with the stings of flies, so that from the trivial instrument of their affliction they might recognize the avenger’s power.” After God’s purpose and the form of punishment made clear the voluntary sins whose rejection was awaited and sought, only then does the writer’s rebuke rise against the stubborn impiety of those punished. He says they had entered into such familiarity with crimes that these seemed in a way inborn. “You were not ignorant,” he says, “that their race had been most wicked, that their malice was natural, and that their thought could never be changed; for they were a cursed seed from the beginning. Nor did you grant pardon for their sins out of fear of anyone” (Wisdom 12:10–11).

He means: “Although you so kindly and patiently granted time for repentance and set up a watchtower of warning, to defend your justice and mercy against every slander and every suspicion of cruelty, they nevertheless despised your warnings after despising your earlier benefits.” They acted as though wishing to prove that they came from the seed of Ham, against whom blessed Noah, after his nakedness was mocked, had hurled curses in fatherly judgment (compare Genesis 9:20–27). Why be surprised, then, that the writer recalled the severe sentence that had struck their ancestor for his insolence, to disgrace descendants who did not cease imitating him? In the Law, imitation by descendants is frequently rebuked using terms of kinship. Thus the Lord says to the Jews in the Gospel, “You are from your father the devil” (John 8:44). Daniel is also read rebuking the filthy elders, though they came from Israel’s stock, in the same way: “Seed of Canaan, not of Judah” (Daniel 13:56; Susanna 56). The prophet Ezekiel likewise reproaches the people of Jerusalem: “Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite” (Ezekiel 16:3, 45).

This is therefore an established usage: defamation of ancestry is added to blame of the will. A person appears to cling excessively to crime when, because of that crime, even his seed suffers insult. The same custom is also observed on the side of good people: when a man appears upright in every way, he is said to flourish with inborn virtues. Thus blessed Job affirms that he drew from the breasts the compassionate feeling with which he helped the needy, or rather that it came with him from his mother’s womb (Job 31:18). No comparison, exaggeration, or ambiguity can therefore count against plain facts. It is certain that mortals are never required to correct natural properties, yet God commands human beings to desist from evil. It is thus proved with the utmost truth that natural sin cannot exist.