AC 1050 - Gifts from the Lord

AC 1050 [2]

That the states of innocence, charity, and mercy
which a person has had in infancy
and during the years of childhood,
cause him to be capable of being a person,
is plainly evident from this,
that man is not born into any exercise of life,
as brute animals are,
but has everything to learn,
and what he learns becomes by exercise habitual,
and thus as it were natural to him.
He cannot even walk or speak until he learns,
and so with everything else.
By use these things become as it were natural to him.
And such is the case also
with the states of innocence, charity, and mercy
with which he is in like manner imbued from infancy,
and without which states
he would be much viler than a brute.
Yet these are states which man does not learn,
but receives as a gift from the Lord,
and which the Lord preserves in him.
Together with the truths of faith,
they are also what are called "remains"
and are of the Lord alone.
Insofar as a man in adult age extinguishes these states,
he becomes dead.
When a man is being regenerated,
these states are the beginnings of regeneration,
and he is led into them;
for the Lord works through the remains, 
as already stated.