Free choice is the material principle of pious acts; freed by grace it cooperates even in first conversion
What has been said also makes clear that the Protestants recognize free choice, which survived in man after sin, as the principle that acts (principium quod), or as others put it the material principle, of pious and spiritual actions. Before grace, however, it lacks the freedom that is the principle by which (principium quo), the formal principle of those actions.
Once that freedom to act well has been regained through the helps of grace God supplies, free choice cooperates with divine grace, not only in the acts that follow a man's first conversion but in the very acts that make up that first conversion.
So the Protestants do not deny that all of man's good works, which must be credited to grace, come actively and freely from man's will as grace moves and rouses it. Nor do they deny that man uses his inborn and essential freedom both when, driven by his own malice, he leaves undone the acts the Gospel commands him, and when, with grace helping, he performs them.
Latin
XLIX. Ex dictis quoque planum est, Protestantes agnoscere liberum arbitrium, quod post peccatum in homine mansit, esse principium quod, aut ut alii dicunt, materiale actionum piarum & spiritualium, licet ante gratiam careat illa libertate, quae est principium quo sive formale actionum illarum. Liberum vero arbitrium, recuperata illa bene agendi libertate, per auxilia gratiae a Deo subministrata, cooperari divinae gratiae, non solum in actibus primam conversionem hominis sequentibus, verum etiam in iis in quibus prima illa conversio consistit. Ac proinde Protestantes eosdem non negare quin omnia bona hominis opera, quae gratiae tribuenda sunt, active & libere ab hominis voluntate, quam gratia movet & excitat, procedant: adeoque quin homo sibi innata & essentiali libertate utatur, sive dum actus ipsi in Evangelio praeceptos, propria impulsus malitia, omittit, sive dum illos, gratia auxiliante, elicit.