1. First Opinion

57. In one way [from Aquinas], that ‘it can be considered as a property or as a relation; as a property it precedes generation, - as a relation it follows’; and then, according to what it constitutes, the second person need not be simultaneous with the first, although according to its being a relation - consequent, as it were, to generation - the second should be simultaneous with it.

58. Against this:

A property ‘as property’ is some entity, otherwise it would not constitute any being. Either therefore it is a being to itself or to another or neither; that some entity is singular, that is neither an entity to itself nor to another, does not seem intelligible; therefore this entity should be formally to itself, and then it will constitute an absolute person - or to another, and that ‘as a property’ it will be a relation; and then the difficulty is not avoided, even though there is one way of considering it as a property and another as a relation.

And the reason can be confirmed by an example, because although whiteness can be considered as whiteness or as a quality (and if it be considered as whiteness, that is according to its proper specific reason, - but if as quality, this is according to the idea of an ‘imperfect’ instance in its genus), yet whatever is constituted by whiteness is not constituted by any entity that is not a quality, because whiteness even ‘as whiteness’ essentially includes quality and is essentially quality, so that whiteness cannot constitute anything save in qualitative being. So does it seem in the issue at hand, about a relative property considered in this way and in that [n.57].

60. Further, he [Aquinas, Roger Marston] says elsewhere that ‘in divine reality there cannot be order’ (because neither in the case of the essence to the relations, nor in the case of the relations among themselves), ‘because relatives are simultaneous in nature’. - But if a property can be considered in the way in which it would not be a relation (and in this way it need not have a correlative simultaneous in nature), their argument would not be valid.