But how can we attain freedom, we who serve the world, who serve money, who serve the desires of the flesh?
I correct myself; I judge myself; I make known my faults. Let those who hear see what they perceive about themselves.
I, meanwhile, say that as long as I am devoted to any of these things I have not turned to the Lord nor have I followed freedom as long as such affairs and cares bind me. I am a slave of that affair and care to which I am bound. For I know that it is written that "by what each one is conquered, to this also he is delivered as a slave." (2 Peter 2:19)
Even if love of money does not overcome me, even if the care of possessions and riches does not bind me, nevertheless I desire praise and follow human glory, if I depend on the expressions and words of men, what this man feels about me, how that man regards me, lest I displease this man, if I please that one. As long as I seek those things I am their slave.
But I would want to try at least, if I might be able to be freed from this, if I might be able to be released from the yoke of this foul slavery and attain freedom in accordance with the admonition of the Apostle who says: "You have been called to freedom; do not become the slaves of men." (Galatians 5:13, Corinthians 7:23).
But who will give me this manumission? Who will free me from this most unseemly slavery except him who said, "If the son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed"? (John 8:36).
But indeed I know that a slave cannot be given freedom unless he serves faithfully and loves his master. And for this reason, let us also serve faithfully and "let us love the Lord our God with our whole heart and with our whole soul and with our whole strength," (Mark 12:30), that we might deserve to be given freedom by Christ Jesus, his son, our Lord.

—

The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto 16, speech of Marco Lombardo:
Brother,
the world is blind, and you come from the world.
You living ones continue to assign
to heaven every cause, as if it were
the necessary source of every motion.
If this were so, then your free will would be
destroyed, and there would be no equity
in joy for doing good, in grief for evil.
The heavens set your appetites in motion—
not all your appetites, but even if
that were the case, you have received both light
on good and evil, and free will, which though
it struggle in its first wars with the heavens,
then conquers all, if it has been well nurtured.
On greater power and a better nature
you, who are free, depend; that Force engenders
the mind in you, outside the heavens' sway.
Thus, if the present world has gone astray,
in you is the cause, in you it's to be sought.