For although the power of will is incomparably greater in God
than in me, both by reason of the knowledge and the power
which, conjoined with it, render it stronger and more
efficacious, and by reason of its object, inasmuch as in God
it extends to a great many things; it nevertheless does not
seem to me greater if I consider it formally and precisely in
itself: for the faculty of will consists alone in our having
the power of choosing to do a thing or choosing not to do it
(that is, to affirm or deny, to pursue or to shun it), or
rather it consists alone in the fact that in order to affirm
or deny, pursue or shun those things placed before us by the
understanding, we act so that we are unconscious that any
outside force constrains us in doing so. For in order that I
should be free it is not necessary that I should be
indifferent as to the choice of one or the other of two
contraries; but contrariwise the more I lean to the
one?whether I recognise clearly that the reasons of the good
and true are to be found in it, or whether God so disposes my
inward thought?the more freely do I choose and embrace it.
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