ove what he does not love and still less
what he wills not to love. For the spirit or mind of man enjoys complete
freedom in thinking, willing, believing and loving. It does so by influx
which is not coercive from the spiritual world (for the human spirit or
mind is in that world); and not by influx from the natural world,
received only when the two agree.

[2] A man can be driven to say that he thinks and wills, believes and
loves what is religious, but if this is not a matter of his affection and
reasoning or does not become so, he does not think, will, believe or love
it. A man may also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act
according to it, but he cannot be compelled to think in its favor from
any faith or to will in its favor out of love for it. In countries in
which justice and judgment are guarded, one is indeed compelled not to
speak or act against religion, but still no one can be compelled to think
and will in its favor. For everyone has freedom to think and to will
along with, and in favor of, hell or along with, and in favor of, heaven.
Reason, however, teaches what either course is like and what lot awaits
it, and by reason the will has the choice and decision.

[3] Plainly, then, what is external cannot coerce what is internal;
nevertheless it happens sometimes, but that it works harm will be shown
in this order:

i. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, for they coerce.
ii. No one is reformed by visions and communication with the dead, for
they coerce.
iii. No one is reformed by threats and penalties, as these coerce.
iv. No one is reformed in states of no rationality or no freedom.
v. Self-compulsion is not contrary to rationality and freedom.
vi. The external man is to be reformed through the internal, and not the
other way about.

130. (i) _No one is reformed by miracles and signs, for they coerce._ We
have shown above that man has an internal and an external of thought, and
that the Lord acts into the external by the internal in man and so
teaches and leads him; also that it is of the Lord's divine providence
that man is to act in freedom according to reason. Either action would
perish in man if miracles were done and he were driven by them to
believe. That this is so can be seen rationally in this way: undeniably
miracles induce belief and powerfully persuade a person that what the
miracle-doer says and teaches is true, and at first this engages man's
external of thought, virt