Call it no more free-will, but slavish lust; free to evil, but free from good, till regenerating grace loosens the bands of wickedness.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true freedom is often confused with the ability to choose evil over good, which is not genuine freedom but a form of bondage to one's desires.
In this quote, Thomas Boston emphasizes the concept of free will as it relates to moral choice, arguing that what many regard as freedom is actually a form of enslavement to selfish desires. He asserts that without the transformative power of grace, individuals remain bound to their vices, losing the true capacity for goodness, which is not simply the absence of restriction but a positive alignment towards moral actions and virtues.
In practice
During a philosophical debate on morality, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of understanding true freedom.
Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall.
Free grace will fix those whom free will shook down into a gulf of misery.
Whoever be the instruments of any good to us, of whatever sort, we must look above them, and eye the hand and counsel of God in it, which is the first spring, and be duly thankful to God for it. And whatever evil of crosses or afflictions befalls us, we must look above the instruments of it to God.
No work nor deed of ours whatsoever, no not faith itself, can be the condition of the covenant of grace properly so called; but only Christ's fulfilling all righteousness.
The law discovers the disease, and the gospel the physician.
Has God decreed all things that come to pass? Then there is nothing that falls out by chance, nor are we to ascribe what we meet with either to good or ill luck and fortune. There are many events in the world which men look upon as mere accidents, yet all these come by the counsel and appointment of Heaven.
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.
Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river.
How much disgruntled heaviness, lameness, dampness, how much beer is there in the German intelligence.
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
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