Annotation XIX

”Blessed are they that mourn,” etc. — Matthew 5:5

Whether the wicked sin under the devil's compulsion.

The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 9, explaining this [verse], seems to hint that there are some who sin under the devil’s forcing and compelling — which certainly overturns the liberty of the human will. For thus we read in him: “The saints, so long as they are in the world — not knowing the providence of God nor fully understanding [it], who fall under the devil’s compulsion, and who do not love evils out of an evil purpose — all, [as] sinners, mourn, thinking that all are circumvented and compelled by the devil.” I judge that he used the words “forcing” and “compelling” hyperbolically — not to [assert] a liberty of the will already destroyed (which elsewhere he even exalts more than is fair), but to express the vehement temptation of the devil, which can scarcely, and only with difficulty, be resisted.