A human being has reason and freedom, or rationality and liberty,
and these two faculties are present in a person from the Lord.
Natural freedom everyone has herditarily.
Rational freedom results from love of one's reputation
for the sake of honor or material gain.
Spiritual freedom results from a love of eternal life.
No one else comes into that love and its delight
but one who thinks that evils are sins
and for that reason does not will them,
and who at the same time looks to the Lord.
As soon as a person does this, he is in that state of freedom.
For no one can resist willing evils because they are sins
and for that reason not do them
except by the exercise of an interior or higher freedom
which results from an interior or higher love that he has.
This kind of freedom does not appear at first to be freedom,
even though it is.
But afterward it does appear to be so,
and a person then acts in real freedom in accordance with real reason,
thinking, willing, speaking and doing what is good and true.
This state of freedom grows
as the exercise of natural freedom decreases and becomes its servant,
and as it unites itself with rational freedom and purifies it.
provided he is willing to believe that life is eternal,
and that any delight and blessedness of life in time, for a time,
is but as a fleeting shadow
compared to the delight and blessedness of life in eternity, to eternity.
Moreover, a person can believe this,
if he is willing to,
because he has rationality and freedom,
and because the Lord
from whom he has these two faculties
continually gives him the ability.
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