To Florus 5.42

Since will is well defined as ‘a movement of the mind under no compulsion,’ why do you seek earlier causes which the definition of will has excluded? Weigh what will is, and you will stop asking where will comes from. Will is a movement of the mind under no compulsion. If you try to go so much as half a fingernail beyond this, you immediately overthrow what has been established. What does Mani say? ‘This movement arose because the human being was made from the nature of darkness.’ What do you say? ‘Because the human being was made from nothing.’ Thus one says, ‘The will is evil because the human being was made from nothing’; the other, ‘The will is evil in a human being because he was made from darkness.’ Both of you deny what completes the will’s definition: ‘under no compulsion.’ If nothing had as much power as something, and that power compelled this will to exist, it excluded the will’s own condition, expressed as ‘under no compulsion.’

But it has equally driven away evil’s disgrace. What does not come from a free movement of the mind is not sin. Thus, at the expense of truth, all the odium of evil perished. Evil’s nature vanished when the will’s guilt vanished; the will’s guilt vanished when the definition of will was cut apart. It has therefore become clear that the condition of both sin and will is such that, if attributed to preceding causes, it loses both its freedom and its guilt. Where, then, will evil’s nature be, once it is established that no evil exists?