The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

God in his working maintains the faculties of the Soul in their actings, as he made them. Approbation belongs properly to the intellectual part; for before any man can will a thing, it is presupposed that he esteems it to be good, in the judgment of his understanding, and this is to be approved. That the will must be renewed, I do not at all question, whether the Lord doth it immediately or mediately by the understanding; I had rather feel the renewing, than dispute which of these two ways God doth it: but sure I am, if he renews the will, then he renews a rational Creature; If his people be willing in the day of his power, Psal. 110.3. Yet the day of his power is not a day of forcing the will, which cannot be done by God himself; it must cease to be a will then. Possum, volo, malo, have no Imperative Mood; then to be sure the understanding and judgment must go before. To fancy, that by the Spirits renewing of the will immediately, Christ shall come to have the chief room in the heart, though the practical Judgment did not (with all circumstances and things considered) approve of him as the chiefest good, is but irrational. When then the Spirit doth show to the understanding, in a Covenant and saving way, the excellencies of ⟨p. 171⟩Christ, the fitness of him to answer the state in which the Soul now seeth it self under sin, misery, emptiness and guilt, which most affects the Soul, to see one so fitted for him to help him, and enough to satisfy him; when he showeth him the Table spread in the Gospel, and set with those dishes, which suits his hungry Soul, as ever did Feast suit his sensitive appetite, (Isai. 25.6. Prov. 9.1.2, 3, 45.) the Judgment immediately approves, and the Spirit in that very instant in the will inclines it as the first cause, and the will determines as the second cause, as freely, as if there were no presence of God there, for it acts according to its nature. To think that God works only upon the Understanding and Judgment, and lets the will alone; or that he works upon the will alone, and not at the same time upon the Understanding, are notions which no rational man will receive.

God in his working maintains the faculties of the Soul in their actings, as he made them. Approbation belongs properly to the intellectual part; for before any man can will a thing, it is presupposed that he esteems it to be good, in the judgment of his understanding, and this is to be approved. That the will must be renewed, I do not at all question, whether the Lord doth it immediately or mediately by the understanding; I had rather feel the renewing, than dispute which of these two wayes God doth it: but sure I am, if he renews the will, then he renews a rational Creature; If his people be willing in the day of his power,