can confirm the truth of this for himself who knows and believes that the
will to good and the understanding of truth are wholly from the Lord, and
not from man. The Word teaches that man can take nothing of himself and
do nothing of himself (Jn 3:27; 15:5).

89. As all willing is from love and all understanding is from wisdom, the
ability to will is from divine love, and the ability to understand is
from divine wisdom; thus both are from the Lord who is divine love itself
and divine wisdom itself. Hence to act in freedom according to reason has
no other source. Everyone acts in freedom because, like love, freedom
cannot be separated from willing. But there is interior and exterior
willing, and a man can act upon the exterior without acting at the same
time on the interior willing; so hypocrite and flatterer act. Exterior
willing, however, is still from freedom, being from a love of appearing
other than one is, or from love of an evil which the person intends in
the love of his inner will. An evil man, however, as has been said,
cannot in freedom according to reason do anything but evil; he cannot do
good in freedom according to reason; he can do good, to be sure, but not
in the inner freedom which is his own, from which the outer freedom has
its character of not being good.

90. A person can be reformed and regenerated, we have said, in the
measure in which he is led by the two faculties to acknowledge that all
good and truth which he thinks and does are from the Lord and not from
himself. A man can make this acknowledgment only by means of the two
faculties, because they are from the Lord and are the Lord's in him, as
is plain from what has been said. Man can make this acknowledgment,
therefore, only from the Lord and not from himself; he can make it as if
of himself; this the Lord gives everyone to do. He may believe that it is
of himself, but when wiser acknowledge that it is not of himself.