See his kindness! Though he could have made us fair by force, without toil,
he has toiled in every way that we might become fair by our own choice,
ourselves the artists of our own fairness
using the colors our own freedom had gathered.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on the Fath, no. 31, quoted in Chorbishop Seely Joseph Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology, with Special Reference to the Maronite Tradition, CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2014) p. 39.
An interesting convergence with the recent passage by Rosmini I excerpted here (which, however, seems to be independent).
