. God made man in his image (Gen. i. 26); he made him upright (Eccles.
vii. 29). But also he made him free. Man has behaved badly, he has fallen;
but there remains still a certain freedom after the fall. Moses said as
from God: 'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I
have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore [297]
choose life' (Deut. xxx. 19). 'Thus saith the Lord: Behold, I set before
you the way of life, and the way of death' (Jer. xxi. 8). He has left man
in the power of his counsel, giving him his ordinances and his
commandments. 'If thou wilt, thou shalt keep the commandments' (or they
shall keep thee). 'He hath set before thee fire and water, to stretch forth
thine hand to whichever thou wilt' (Sirach xv. 14, 15, 16). Fallen and
unregenerate man is under the domination of sin and of Satan, because it
pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary slave through his evil lust. Thus
it is that free will and will in bondage are one and the same thing.

278. 'Let no man say, I am tempted of God'; 'but every man is tempted, when
he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (Jas. i. 13, 14). And Satan
contributes thereto. He 'blindeth the minds of them which believe not' (2
Cor. iv. 4). But man is delivered up to the Devil by his covetous desire:
the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. Plato has said so
already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum.'
Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St. Augustine observed.
All _pleasure_ is a feeling of some perfection; one _loves_ an object in
proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine
perfections. Whence it follows that charity and love of God give the
greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that proportion in which one is
penetrated by these feelings, which are not common among men, busied and
taken up as men are with the objects that are concerned with their
passions.

279. Now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do not
necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must likewise
be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however efficacious divine
grace may be, there is justification for saying that one can resist it. But
when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain and infallible beforehand
that one will yield to its allurements, whether it have its strength of
itself or whether it find a way to triumph t