it is usual to enter into covenants between two, that is, one proposes
and the other accepts, and the one who accepts consents. If he does not
consent the covenant is not established. To consent to this covenant is
to think, will, and do as if of oneself. Man's thinking to shun evil
and to do good as if of himself is done not by man, but by the Lord.

This is done by the Lord for the sake of reciprocation and consequent
conjunction; for the Lord's Divine love is such that it wills that what
is its own shall be man's, and as these things cannot be man's, because
they are Divine, it makes them to be as if they were man's. In this way
reciprocal conjunction is effected, that is, that man is in the Lord and
the Lord in man, according to the words of the Lord Himself in John
(xiv. 20); for this would not be possible if there were not in the
conjunction something belonging as it were to man. What man does as if
of himself he does as if of his will, of his affection, of his freedom,
consequently of his life. Unless these were present on man's part as if
they were his there could be no receptivity, because nothing reactive,
thus no covenant and no conjunction; in fact, no ground whatever for the
imputation that man had done evil or good or had believed truth or
falsity, thus that there is from merit a hell for anyone because of evil
works, or from grace a heaven for anyone because of good works. (A.E.,
n. 971.)

He who refrains from thefts, understood in a broad sense, and even shuns
them from any other cause than religion and for the sake of eternal
life, is not cleansed of them; for only by such refraining is heaven
opened. For it is through heaven that the Lord removes evils in man, as
through heaven He removes the hells. For example, there are higher and
lower managers of property, merchants, judges, officers of every kind,
and workmen, who refrain from thefts, that is, from unlawful modes of