II. To the Principal Arguments

16. As to the first principal argument [n.2], I concede the major, that ‘every will is lord of its act’. And when it is said in the minor that ‘the will that follows the movement of another power is subject in its act and not lord of its act’, I say - as elsewhere in d. 1 nn.17, 80-81 - that the Word has no causality over the act of the created will in Christ that the whole Trinity does not have; and so the created will in the Word is no more deprived of lordship with respect to its acts because of its union with the Word than if it was not united to the Word.

17. But then further to the argument [n.2], according to the double opinion touched on in Ord. 2 dd.34-37 nn.97-107, 113, 119-128, 142-154:

If the will is the immediate and total cause of its act, so that it does not follow the movement of the Trinity that, along with the will, causes the act of the will - but the Trinity only places the will in its first existence and if the will moves itself in its acts, such that the Trinity does not operate in the operation of the will save because the Trinity works for the existence of the will (according to one opinion) - then the minor is false that ‘the will follows in its operation the movement of another power’; for although it follows the movement of another power in its existence as regard first act, yet it does not do so as regard operation (immediately, I mean).

But if the view be held that the will would immediately cause its operation and nevertheless God too immediately causes it along with the will, just as he immediately causes the existence of the will, then because (as I said [n.16]) the Word has no special operation different from the whole Trinity, yet the Word and not the whole Trinity is denominated by the operation of the created will (because of the union that produces the sharing of characteristics) - then I say that the created will in Christ elicit its acts freely and is lord of its act just as my will does and is lord now, for God does not operate with his operation unless the created will freely acts and determines itself to operation, and then God operates along with it; but nevertheless the first freedom and lordship is not in the created will but in God’s will, which does not have another cause operating along with it for its act but yet is as much in the creature as it can be in it.

18. As to the second argument [n.3], when it is said that free will and natural will are two wills, I say that natural will - as such and as it is natural - is not will as a power but imports only the inclination of the power to receiving its perfection, not to acting as such; and therefore it is imperfect, unless it is under the perfection to which the tendency inclines the power. Hence the natural power does not tend but is the tendency whereby the absolute will tends - and that passively - to receiving [its perfection]. But there is another tendency in the same power, so that it tend freely and actively in eliciting its act, so that there is one power and a double tendency (an active and a passive tendency). Then to the form of the argument [n.3], I say that natural will, according to what it formally imports, is not power or will but the inclination of the will and the tendency whereby it tends to passively receiving its perfection.