1. God has given natural freedom to the will of each person so that it is neither forced nor determined to good or evil, by any absolute necessity of nature.

2. Mankind, in the state of innocence, had the freedom and power to will and to do what was good and pleasing to God, but was nevertheless changeable, so that they might fall from this state.

3. By the fall into a state of sin, mankind has wholly lost all ability to will or to do any spiritual good accompanying salvation. A person in his natural state is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself or to prepare himself for it, being altogether averse to the good, and dead in sin.

4. When God converts a sinner and translates him into the state of grace, he frees him from his natural bondage to sin. By this grace alone, God enables him to freely will and to do what is spiritually good, yet so that, because of the sinner’s remaining corruption, he does not perfectly or only will to do what is good, but also wills to do what is evil.

5. The will of people will be made perfectly and unchangeably free to want solely what is good only when they reach the state of glory.