ith GOD in His
grace, as merchants do together: for GOD sets His grace against our
work; but for His grace and His death, He wills (to have) naught but our
praising and thanking, and He wills that man should have all the profit
that may arise thereof. But they try to reave from GOD, His part, who
would be praised of men for good deeds. Against them, GOD says, "I will
not give My glory to another"; that is, "Praising and worship that
belong to Me, I will give to no other." Thou shalt understand, that
free-will of man is to turn freely to good or ill. Three states there
are of man; before sin, after man's sin, and after man is confirmed,
that is, after man is departed out of this deadly life, and come to that
joy that shall never end. In the first place, before man sinned, was
man's will so free, that he could sin or not sin: in his free-will it
was, to do good or ill. In the last state, that is confirmed, shall man
sin no more. In the second state, in which he may sin, and may not but
sin, man's will is free to ill, till it be strengthened with grace: and
when grace leads the will, then it is free to work the good. Before man
sinned, no hindering had he from doing good, nor no need to do ill: but
now has sin joined with our flesh, and bred what S. Paul calls the "law
of the flesh," so that it is master of the flesh, and withstands GOD'S
law in all that it can. This hinders our will from assenting to good;
and stirs it to ill so that it may not work good, unless grace helps and
accustoms him away from sin. Every man before he sins, has a free will
to do good or ill, but when he is bound to the fiend, through works of
sin, he may through no power of himself come out of his bonds: and then
he fares like a ship that in a tempest has lost all that could help it,
and is cast from wave to wave whither the tempest drives it. Right so, a
man who lacks GOD'S grace, because he be fallen into deadly sin, he does
not what he would, but aye wavers from hand to hand, at the fiend's
will, and unless GOD give him grace to rise out of his sin, he shall be
in sin to his life's end, and after, be lost body and soul, and damned
to endless pain. If the folk or the common people choose them a king,
and he be confirmed in his kingdom, he be never so ill to them, they can
do naught to him, unless it be through some other, who has more power
than he: and so, it behoves them suffer, do he them never so much ill.
Right so, man before he sins, has a f