Annotation L, No one's nature is harmed by another's sins (Genesis 3:15)

Annotatio L

”I will put enmities between thee and the woman,” etc. — Genesis 3:15

Augustine, in the second book On Genesis [against the Manichaeans] [interpreted] allegorically, chapter 29, elucidating the sense of this passage, says: “Sins harm no one’s nature but their own.”¹ Because this seems able to be drawn toward the dogma of the Pelagians — who say that another’s sins have not harmed little children — Augustine, in the first book of the Retractations, chapter 10, wishes it to be understood of adult just persons:² because to the just man, whom [another’s sin] harms, not [because to the just man, whom another’s sin harms, it does] not truly harm him: since indeed it even increases his reward in the heavens; but by sinning [the sinner] truly harms himself,³ because, on account of the very will of harming, he receives that which harms [him]. Augustine, in the same book and chapter, asserts that there is no natural evil; and because this seems to favor the Pelagian heresy, he — in the first book of the Retractations, chapter 10 — orders it to be referred to that nature which was founded utterly without any vice.⁴