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THat the will is not capable of spirituall gifts; and that therefore there never were any spi∣rituall gifts in the will of man before his fall; that these graces were never severed from the will of man upon his fall, and that such graces are never infused in regeneration into the wills of men.
THe holy Scripture, in placing Gods spi∣rituall gifts in the heart, acknowledgeth also them to be in the will. As namely
uprightnesse or truth, Psal. 32.12. Rejoyce all yee that are true in heart: puritie, Mat. 5.8. Blessed are the pure in heart: goodnes, Luke 8.15. They are those, which with an honest and good heart heare the word of God and keepe it.
1 But if any man shall referre these graces to the affections, and place them without the will, he shall (which were a foule enormity) settle the chiefest gifts of divine grace in the unreasonable part of the soule. Moreover, the very habituall conversiō of the will unto God the Creator, & the aversion or turning away thereof from the inordinate desire it had to commit fornication with the creature, with∣out doubt is to be counted a chiefe and princi∣pal gift. And that the will was capable of this gift, it doth hence plainly appeare, because it was created with such uprightnesse. For God in the beginning made man righteous. But that this righteousnes is lost, it is over manifest by the effects, seeing that now the will being carnall, cannot choose but injoy and rest in those things which it ought onely to make use of, and use the things which it ought ra∣ther to injoy: forasmuch as a whole trope of
sinfull dispositions have rushed and broke in upon the will.
2 Furthermore, as the will of a meere na∣turall man, is said to be vicious frō a certaine inbred & inherēt wickednes, wch in a wicked man even thē when he doth nothing, is habi∣tuall, so againe we must acknowledge that in the will of the regenerate there is a certaine righteousnesse, infused and given from God, which is presupposed in their religious actions
Saint Austin in many places setteth forth this habituall righteousnesse.
The good will of man goes before many graces of God,* 1.1 but not before all, and this good will it selfe is to be reckoned among those gifts which it selfe can∣not precede.
But lest any man should dreame that this goodnesse of the will is not an inward gift infused into that very faculty, but onely a bare denomination fetched from the act of the will;* 1.2 Prosper calls it the first plantation of the hea∣venly husbandman. Now a plantation notes something engrafted in the soule, not an act or action flowing from the soule.
Enchir. cap. 32.
De vocat. lib. 1. cap. 6.