likened to a door that must first be unfastened and opened. This door, it
is true, stands open, as it were, in those who think and will from reason
in accord with the civil laws of the land and the moral laws of society,
for they speak what they think and do what they will to do. But in those
who think and will contrary to those laws, the door stands shut, as it
were. One who watches his volitions and subsequent deeds knows that such
a decision intervenes, sometimes more than once in a single utterance or
action. This we have premised for it to be understood that by acting from
freedom according to reason is meant to think and will freely _and_
thence to speak and do freely what is according to reason.

72. Since few know, however, that the law above can be a law of divine
providence, principally because a man is also free then to think evil and
falsity (still divine providence is continually leading him to think and
will what is good and true), for clearer perception we must proceed step
by step and shall do so in this order:

i. The human being has reason and freedom or rationality and liberty, and
has these two faculties from the Lord.
ii. Whatever a man does in freedom, whether with reason or not, provided
it is according to his reason, seems to him to be his.
iii. Whatever a man does in freedom according to his thought, is
appropriated to him as his and remains.
iv. A man is reformed and regenerated by the Lord by means of the two
faculties and cannot be reformed and regenerated without them.
v. A man can be reformed and regenerated by means of the two faculties so
far as he can be led by them to acknowledge that all truth and good which
he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from himself.
vi. The conjunction of the Lord with man, and man's reciprocal
conjunction with the Lord, is effected by means of these two faculties.