I am free, nor can I doubt of it. I am intimately and invincibly
convinced that I can either will or not will, and that there is in
me a choice not only between willing and not willing, but also
between divers wills about the variety of objects that present
themselves. I am sensible, as the Scripture says, that I "am in the
hands of my Council," which alone suffices to show me that my soul
is not corporeal. All that is body or corporeal does not in the
least determine itself, and is, on the contrary, determined in all
things by laws called physical, which are necessary, invincible, and
contrary to what I call liberty. From thence I infer that my soul
is of a nature entirely different from that of my body. Now who is
it that was able to join by a reciprocal union two such different
natures, and hold them in so just a concert for all their respective
operations? That tie, as we observed before, cannot be formed but
by a Superior Being, who comprehends and unites those two sorts of
perfections in His own infinite perfection.


SECT. LXVII. Man's Liberty Consists in that his Will by
determining, Modifies Itself.


It is not the same with the modification of my soul which is called
will, and by some philosophers volition, as with the modifications
of bodies. A body does not in the least modify itself, but is
modified by the sole power of God. It does not move itself, it is
moved; it does not act in anything, it is only acted and actuated.
Thus God is the only real and immediate cause of all the different
modifications of bodies. As for spirits the case is different, for