B. What these Intervals Were

41. About the second article, namely what were these intervals [n.23]? Although some posit that these were diverse by an instant of discrete time, yet, from 2 d.2 nn.153-167, it is plain that one should for no reason posit discrete time in angels but diverse ‘nows’ of the aevum.

42. But to what in our continuous time do those ‘nows’ of the aevum correspond? I say that the final interval, namely of existing in the term, corresponds to the whole time after the first instant of the blessedness of the good and the damnation of the bad. However the first interval, in which they were uniform, can be posited to have coexisted with our instant or with a part of our time. And one must make a posit consistent with this about the second interval; for if the first interval coexists with time and a final instant of it, then the second interval did not have any first instant in our time corresponding to it.

43. And although it seems to some that it was necessary for the angel to have first sinned in an instant (or with an instant) of our time, and although it seems to others that the angel would necessarily have to have sinned along with our time - the first indeed have on their side that between privative opposites in a subject naturally apt for them there is no middle, and when a subject is indivisible there is no cause of succession from term to term (neither on the part of the terms, nor on the part of the movable thing), and the second have on their side that ‘no created virtue acts in an instant, because then a greater virtue would act in less than an instant’ [2 d.2 nn.287, 505] - however neither of these reasons is conclusive. The point will be clear about the first in 3 d.3 q.1 nn.11-13, 9-10, where a reply will be given to that reason by maintaining that the soul of the blessed Virgin could precisely have been in sin for an instant and afterwards have been clean; nor is the second conclusive, but a response was given to it before [2 d.2 nn.505-506].

44. So in both ways it was possible both that the first interval of innocence coexisted with time and not with an ultimate instant of it, and that the second interval had a first instant of time coexisting with it - or that the first interval would coexist with time and an ultimate instant of it (or to one instant of time only), and then that the second interval did not have any first interval corresponding to it, just as neither is there a first change in continuous motion, from Physics 6.5.236a7-b18.

45. But of what sort was the second interval in itself - was it instantaneous or indivisible?

It seems that it was not, for two reasons:

First, because the bad angels sinned with many sins, of diverse species, and did not have all their acts at once [d.7 n.18 below]; therefore they had one after another - and thus, in the whole interval during which they had those acts, they were on the way (otherwise the later acts would not have been demerits for them, but as it were punishments for them as they exist in the term).

46. Second, because to the good angels is ascribed for their great merit that they overcame the battle of temptation, Revelation 12.7-8, “A great battle was waged in heaven; Michael and his angels battling with the dragon, and the dragon was fighting and his angels etc.” For if there were precisely one instant in which the bad demerited and the good merited, that battle would not have existed in it nor the victory over temptation, and thus this victory would not be ascribed to them for their praise and their excelling merit. -The proof of the assumption is that, if there had been only one instant, the bad would have sinned and the good would have merited at the same time; but in the instant of nature in which the bad sinned, their sin did not tempt the good; for it did not tempt them save posterior in nature to its being committed by the bad. Therefore the good overcame temptation after the bad sinned, and so this fact proves that the interval of demerit of the bad was not indivisible; and from this it follows that neither was the interval indivisible of the merit of the good (because they were equals, from the fifth proposition [n.35]), and the second way [here n.46 above] proves this specifically of the interval of the merit of the good.