Divine Providence (Dick and Pulsford) n. 89

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89. Now because all willing is from love and all understanding is from wisdom, it follows that the power to will is from the Divine Love, and the power to understand is from the Divine Wisdom; and thus that both are from the Lord who is the Divine Love itself and the Divine Wisdom itself. Hence it follows that to act from freedom according to reason is from no other source. Everyone acts according to reason because freedom, like love, is inseparable from willing; but in man there is an interior and an exterior willing; and he can act according to the exterior and not at the same time according to the interior, as the hypocrite and the flatterer do; and yet such exterior willing is from freedom, because it is from the love of appearing to be other than what one really is, or it is from the love of some evil to which one is inclined from some love of his interior will. But as has been said above, a wicked man cannot from freedom according to his reason do anything except what is evil; moreover, he cannot from freedom according to reason do good. He can indeed do it, but not from that interior freedom which is his own, the freedom to which his exterior freedom owes the fact that it is not good.


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