Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration that man is free and his own master, so that he can choose the better things or their opposites; and concerning the saying: How often would I have gathered your children together, and you would not? (Matt. 23) This makes plain the ancient law of man's freedom, because God made him free from the beginning, having his own power, just as he also has his own soul, so that he might use the sentence of God voluntarily, and not be compelled by God. For force is not found in God, but a good will is always present with him. And on this account he gives good counsel to all. But he placed in man the power of choice, just as he did also in the angels (for the angels too are rational beings), so that those who obeyed might justly possess the good — given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. Those, however, who did not obey are justly found without the good, and receive their deserved punishment, since God kindly gave the good, while they did not carefully keep it, nor did they esteem it precious, but despised its surpassing worth. Casting away the good, then, and as it were spitting it out, all rightly incur the just judgment of God, just as the Apostle Paul also testified in the epistle to the Romans, saying: 'Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself against the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God. But glory and honor,' he says, 'to everyone who works good.' God therefore gave the good, as the Apostle also testifies in the same epistle; and those who do it will receive glory and honor, because, being able not to do it, they did the good anyway; while those who do not do it will meet with God's righteous verdict, seeing that they left the good undone though it lay within their power. This is a demonstration that it is not the case that some are good and some evil by nature, but that the good lies in man's own choice.