616. Tell me, if you can, whether there can ever be such blind stupidity about regeneration as that displayed by those convinced of present-day faith. This is a belief that faith is poured into a person while he is like a block of wood or a stone, and that infusion is followed by justification, which is the forgiveness of sins, regeneration and many other gifts; and that any activity on the person's part is to be utterly ruled out in order to avoid doing any damage to Christ's merit. To establish this dogma even more securely, they have snatched away from people any free will in spiritual matters, making them totally powerless in this respect; as if God would then act alone on His part, and no power would be given to the person to co-operate on his part, and so to link himself with God. If that were so, what would a person be as regards regeneration but tied hand and foot like the slaves chained in galleys?* If he got free from his manacles and leg-irons, he would, like the slaves, be punished and condemned to death - that is, if he used his free will to do good to his neighbour, and believed in God of his own accord so as to be saved.
[2] If a person were to convince himself of such beliefs, although he piously hoped to go to heaven, he would be nothing but a ghost, standing waiting to see whether that faith with the benefits it conveys had been poured into him, or if not, whether it was being poured in; and likewise whether God the Father had shown mercy, or whether His Son had interceded, or whether the Holy Spirit was too busy elsewhere to act on him. In the end he would in his total ignorance about this go away and console himself with this reflexion: 'Perhaps that grace may be present in the moral behaviour I adopt in life and in which I continue as formerly, so that in me it is holy, but in those who have not acquired that faith, unholy. So to ensure that holiness remains in my moral behaviour, I shall take care in future not to exercise faith or charity of my own accord' - and more of the same sort. Such a ghost, or if you prefer such a pillar of salt, is what everyone becomes who thinks about regeneration unaccompanied by free will in spiritual matters.
* The Latin text here uses the French word for 'galleys', galeres.
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