FREE will is granted to every man. If he desire to incline towards the good way and be righteous, he has the power to do so; and if he desire to incline towards the unrighteous way and be a wicked man, he has also the power to do so. Give no room in your minds to that which is asserted by heathen fools, and also by many of the ignorant among the Israelites themselves, namely: that the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees that a man from his birth should be either a righteous man or a wicked man.
Since the power of doing good or evil is in our own hands, and since all the wicked deeds which we have committed have been committed with our full consciousness, it befits us to turn in penitence and to forsake our evil deeds; the power of doing so being still in our hands. Now this matter is a very important principle; nay, it is the pillar of the Law and of the commandments.
MOSES MAIMONIDES, 1180.
THE WICKED SAITH IN HIS HEART
FOR they said within themselves, reasoning not aright,
‘Short and sorrowful is our life;
And there is no healing when a man cometh to his end,
And none was ever known that returned out of Hades.
Because by mere chance were we born,