To Florus 4.88

Having completed these points as the subject required, I would like to question you at least briefly. With what confidence do you say there was no sin in Christ while praising Jerome’s writings? In that Dialogue he composed under the names Atticus and Critobulus, with a remarkable elegance befitting such a faith, he even relies on the testimony of a fifth Gospel, which he says he translated, to try to show that Christ had not only natural but even voluntary sin, because of which he knew he needed cleansing by John’s baptism (compare Jerome, Dialogue against the Pelagians 3.1). From another testimony of John the evangelist, he also fastens on Christ the disgrace of falsehood (compare Jerome, Dialogue against the Pelagians 2.6; John 7:8–10). In the letter you sent to Alexandria, you boast of this work so much that you say Pelagius, overwhelmed by its masses of Scripture, cannot defend free choice. But that work was answered by the catholic man who had been attacked. I have now mentioned it only to make you recognize that you agree neither with the holy Scriptures nor even with the helpers of your own doctrine (John 7:8–10).