DP 136 - More on Being Compelled

DP 136 [3, 4 8, 9]

. . . the internal self so refuses
to be compelled by the external that it turns away:
The reason is that the internal self
wishes to be in freedom and loves freedom,
for freedom is bound up with a person's love or life . . ..
Consequently,
when that freedom feels itself to be compelled,
it withdraws into itself, so to speak,
and turns away,
and regards the compulsion as its enemy.
Indeed, the love
which constitutes the person's life is provoked,
and causes the person to think
that he is then not his own person,
consequently that he has no life of his own.

A person's internal self is of such a character
owing to the law of the Lord's Divine providence
that a person act in freedom
in accordance with his reason.

The fact that the internal self can compel the external
is because the internal self is, so to speak, the master,
and the external self its servant.

. . . a person can be reformed,
not by faith only,
but by a love of the will which forms for itself its faith.

The internal level of thought  . . .
cannot be coerced by any fear.
Yet it can be compelled by love and by a fear of losing it.
Fear of God in its true sense is just that.
To be compelled by love
and by a fear of losing it
is to compel oneself.
. . . [And] is not contrary to one's freedom and rationality.