evil from love of evil and confirms it in
himself acts indeed from freedom according to reason, but his freedom is
not in itself freedom or very freedom, but an infernal freedom which in
itself is bondage, and his reason is not in itself reason, but is either
spurious or false or plausible through confirmations. Still, either is of
divine providence. For if freedom to will evil and do it as of the reason
through confirmation of it were taken from the natural man, liberty and
rationality and at the same time will and understanding would perish, and
he could not be withdrawn any longer from evils, be reformed or united
with the Lord, and live to eternity. The Lord therefore guards man's
freedom as a man does the apple of his eye. Through that freedom the Lord
steadily withdraws man from evils and so far as He can do this implants
goods, thus gradually putting heavenly freedom in place of infernal
freedom.

98. We said above that every man has the faculty of volition called
liberty and the faculty of understanding called rationality. Those
faculties, moreover, it should be known, are as it were inherent in man,
for humanness itself is in them. But as was just said, it is one thing to
act from freedom in accord with reason, and another thing to act from
freedom itself and according to reason itself. Only those do the latter
who have suffered themselves to be regenerated by the Lord; others act in
freedom according to thought which they make seem like reason. Unless he
was born foolish or supremely stupid, every person can attain to reason
itself and by it to liberty itself. Many reasons why all do not do so
will be disclosed in what follows. Here we shall only tell to whom
freedom itself or liberty itself, and at the same time reason itself or
rationality itself cannot be given and to whom they can hardly be given.

[2] True liberty and rationality cannot be given to those foolish from
birth or to those who become foolish later, while they remain so. Nor can
they be given to those born stupid and dull or to any made so by the
torpor of idleness, or by a disease which perverts or entirely closes the
interiors of the mind, or by love of a bestial life.

[3] Genuine liberty and rationality cannot be given to those in
Christendom who utterly deny the Divine of the Lord and the holiness of
the Word, and have kept that denial confirmed to life's close. For this
is meant by the sin against the Holy Spirit which is not forgiven i