Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. x. of Predestination. 273
First in order, came the Theological virtues, Faith, Hope,
and Charity. Then came the gifts Dona ; which were
seven in number, Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge,
Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear. But, besides these,
were also infused moral virtues virtutes morales infuscv ;
which were the same in matter with natural or acquired
virtues, but differed in the end or motive, which was a
spiritual one, while that of the former was natural. The
acquired, and the infused, virtue of temperance, for ex
ample, were both expressed by the same acts ; but the one
aimed at bodily health, or an undisturbed exertion of the
intellectual faculties, the other at spiritual discipline.
Now, so far as the schoolman in this scheme simply
asserts that Grod can, and often does, implant holy dispo
sitions and habits in human souls, without previous disci
pline and training on their part; or maintains the principle
of infused habits, as distinguished from habits acquired
by acts, his position is a natural one, and agrees with our
experience, as well as with the doctrine of the early Church.
We mean by a habit, a certain bias or proneness to act in a
and this bias or is proneness obtained
particular direction ;
in one way by successive acts. But it would be untrue,
and contrary to the plainest facts of nature, to suppose
that this is the only way in which such a bias of the mind
is ever obtained. God evidently imparts it to men, at
for we see them born
birth, in different moral directions ;
with particular dispositions and characters. And as He
imparts it at birth, He appears also sometimes to impart
it on subsequent occasions, by powerful impulses, commu
nicated to the souls of man, either internally, or by the
machinery of his outward providence ; by sudden junctures,
emergencies, in private or public life. We see great
changes produced in men s characters by these exciting
causes, and their minds put, by the force of events, into
particular states and tempers, which they retain afterwards.
ftbsque ipsis causis secundis. . . . tiimen per naturam posset causari ;
Sicut igitur quandoque ad osten- itaetiam hommi
quandpqueinfundit
sionem suse yirtutis producit sani- illos habitus qui natural, yirtutepostatem
absque causa natural! ; quae
sunt causan.
T