VII. IT IS A LAW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE THAT MAN SHALL NOT BE COMPELLED BY EXTERNAL MEANS TO THINK AND WILL, THUS TO BELIEVE AND LOVE WHAT PERTAINS TO RELIGION, BUT BRING HIMSELF AND AT TIMES COMPEL HIMSELF TO DO SO
129. This law of divine providence follows from the preceding two, namely: man is to act in freedom according to reason (nn. 71-99); and is to do this of himself and yet from the Lord, thus as of himself (nn. 100-128). Inasmuch as being compelled is not to act in freedom according to reason and also not to act of oneself, but to act from what is not freedom and from someone else, this law of divine providence follows in due order on the first two. Everyone knows that no one can be forced to think what he is unwilling to think or to will what he decides not to will, thus to believe what he does not believe, least of all what he wills not to believe, or to love what he does not love and still less what he wills not to love. For the spirit or mind of man enjoys complete freedom in thinking, willing, believing and loving. It does so by influx which is not coercive from the spiritual world (for the human spirit or mind is in that world); and not by influx from the natural world, received only when the two agree.
[2] A man can be driven to say that he thinks and wills, believes and loves what is religious, but if this is not a matter of his affection and reasoning or does not become so, he does not think, will, believe or love it. A man may also be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to it, but he cannot be compelled to think in its favor from any faith or to will in its favor out of love for it. In countries in which justice and judgment are guarded, one is indeed compelled not to speak or act against religion, but still no one can be compelled to think and will in its favor. For everyone has freedom to think and to will along with, and in favor of, hell or along with, and in favor of, heaven. Reason, however, teaches what either course is like and what lot awaits it, and by reason the will has the choice and decision.
[3] Plainly, then, what is external cannot coerce what is internal; nevertheless it happens sometimes, but that it works harm will be shown in this order:
i. No one is reformed by miracles and signs, for they coerce. ii. No one is reformed by visions and communication with the dead, for they coerce. iii. No one is reformed by threats and penalties, as these coerce. iv. No one is reformed in states of no rationality or no freedom. v. Self-compulsion is not contrary to rationality and freedom. vi. The external man is to be reformed through the internal, and not the other way about.
130. (i) No one is reformed by miracles and signs, for they coerce. We have shown above that man has an internal and an external of thought, and that the Lord acts into the external by the internal in man and so teaches and leads him; also that it is of the Lord's divine providence that man is to act in freedom according to reason. Either action would perish in man if miracles were done and he were driven by them to believe. That this is so can be seen rationally in this way: undeniably miracles induce belief and powerfully persuade a person that what the miracle-doer says and teaches is true, and at first this engages man's external of thought, virtually holding it spellbound. But one is deprived by this of the two faculties called rationality and liberty, thus cannot act in freedom according to reason, nor can the Lord then inflow into the external of man's thought through the internal save only to leave man to confirm from his rationality what has been made a matter of his belief by the miracle.
[2] The st
