The Renewal of the Evangelical Spirit

...[in whom] God wished ^u to take his delights, he could not then restrict or limit the will of man, whom he wished to create in his likeness to be his ^x Spouse, and not to be his slave, forced to do his will—since every other kind of creature is subjected beneath his volition. But man alone was created ^y ENTIRELY FREE like a little God original: petit Dieu; a common mystical concept suggesting that because man is made in the image of God, he possesses a sovereign, creative freedom over his own moral choices, Sovereign and Ruler over all the creatures that God had subjected to man, leaving him free to use them well or ill, according to his own will. So it was that if man had wished to remain in the Love of his God, he was able to do so; but if he wished to withdraw from His Love, he was similarly able to do so as well, since he was entirely free in the matter.

And as God gave this freedom to man in creating him, he will never take it away from him, since ^z his designs are immutable, and all his works are eternal. He wished to make man a creature entirely free in his Image and likeness, which the Scripture confirms by saying, ^a You are Gods to whom the word is addressed. The author blends Psalm 82:6 with John 10:35 to emphasize the divine dignity and responsibility of the human soul. From this also comes the fact that there is ^b an Eternity of either bliss or misery for man, infallibly, since man is a work of God ^c which must remain eternally, having been made by an Eternal God. If this were not true, there could be no eternal Hell, ^d since God cannot have made any evils, and will never make any, having always made, and will al-