To Florus 4.59
To confirm a plain matter by an example: it is better to possess reason than not to possess it. Human beings were made rational, while animals were made irrational. Yet because human nature surpasses four-footed animals, those animals must not therefore be called an evil or the devil’s work. Suppose, then, that when Christ formed his own members, he chose not to mingle with them a sensation of the reproductive organs that he would not use. When he formed the members of Isaac, Jacob, and everyone else, giving them both sex and sensation, was he therefore doing something evil? Or did he call the devil to help when he came to these things, so that the devil might mingle necessary pleasures into the members Christ himself had assembled? As I have shown, with God’s help, both in this work and in the earlier one, you have obtained absolutely nothing, however small, against the divine works through the person of Christ. For it has become clear that the Savior’s body lacked nothing belonging to human nature.
Latin
Et ut res plana aliquo confirmetur exemplo, melius est habere rationem, quam non habere; homines autem rationabiles facti sunt, pecora vero irrationabilia; non tamen ideo quia humana natura quadrupedibus antestat, quadrupedia aut malum aliquod, aut diaboli opus esse dicenda sunt. Fac ergo, quoniam Christus, cum sua membra formaret, noluerit eis sensum admiscere genitalium, quo usurus non erat; num ideo cum Isaac, Iacob, et omnium membra fingebat, eisque et sexum dabat et sensum, malum aliquid faciebat? Aut ad haec veniens, in adiutorium advocabat diabolum, ut membris quae ipse compegerat, necessaria oblectamenta misceret? Nec exiguum quidquam igitur omnino (sicut et in hoc, et in priore opere, Deo adiuvante monstravimus) per Christi personam contra divina opera obtinere potuisti. Claruit enim nihil minus de natura hominum, Salvatoris corpus habuisse.