Lactantius on the Free Will of Religious Association

"Oh with what an honorable inclination the wretched men go astray! For they are aware that there is nothing among men more excellent than religion, and that this ought to be defended with the whole of our power; but as they are deceived in the matter of religion itself, so also are they in the manner of its defense. For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith. … For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion; in which, if the mind of the worshiper is disinclined to it, religion is at once taken away, and ceases to exist."
Lactantius, “The Divine Institutes, in “Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 156-7.