To Florus 5.39
Not content to win in only one way, I will expose the falsehood of the argument whose impiety I have revealed. When you wrote, ‘An evil will could arise in God’s work not because it was made by God, but because it was made from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48), you should have seen how powerfully the examples of other creatures argue against you. They too were brought forth from nothing, yet are incapable of an evil will. Indeed, the elements themselves, which truly were made from nothing, can have no consciousness of any will, so as to attest through evil movements the necessity of their origin. Living creatures, however, and the other things filling the world, came forth not from nothing but from something already existing. Where, then, is the power of ancient emptiness that compelled an evil will to exist, when it is clear that no being except a rational creature can sin?
Latin
Verum non uno modo vicisse con tentus, argumenti tui, cuius impietatem prodidi, coarguam falsitatem. Cum ergo scriberes: Non ideo potuit oriri voluntas mala in opere Dei, quia a Deo factum est; sed ideo quia de nihilo factum est [n75] ; videre debueras, quam valenter aliarum creaturarum exempla praescriberent, quae totidem productae de nihilo, malae tamen voluntatis capaces non sunt. Postremo ipsa elementa, quae vere sunt facta ex nihilo, non alicuius voluntatis conscientiam queunt habere, ut motibus malis protestentur originis suae necessitatem. Animantes autem, et reliqua queis impletus est orbis, non de nihilo, ceterum iam ex aliquo prodierunt. Ubi est ergo vis inanitatis antiquae, quae malam voluntatem coegit existere; cum praeter rationabile animal, neminem peccare posse manifestum sit?