γ. Instances against the Opinion of Others and Solutions to them

114. But it is objected against this way [n.97] that it would not save God’s being the cause of merit, since merit is as free as sin.

115. Likewise, it would not save the essential order of causes, because, according to the first proposition in On Causes, “Every primary cause has a greater influence on what it causes than does a second universal cause;” but, according to this way, the primary cause would have no influence on the effect save that it produced the other cause of it [sc. the will as cause of the willing this way or that, n.113].

116. To the first of these [n.114] it can be said that God is in some way cause of merit (in a way that he is not cause of sin), because he causes grace (or charity) immediately in the soul, which inclines it by way of nature toward meriting; and whenever a form active by way of nature is from some agent, the action of the form is also from that agent. From this too would be plain how the effects of certain causes would be from God differently from how the effects of the will are, because those determinate causes have received from God an inclination - even a necessitating inclination - to their effects; not so the will.

117. To the second [n.115] it might be said that, although sometimes the order of principal and less principal causes, neither of which moves the other (the way the object and the cognitive power are disposed with respect to the act of knowing, 1 d.3 n.498) -that although this order is such that the principal cause moves the less principal one either to second act or to first act (but so that the two are partial causes and make together with each other one total cause, as hand and stick do with respect to the motion of a ball [1 d.3 n.496], or as sun and father do with respect to a son) - nevertheless, in the case of causes that are total with respect to their immediate effects, there can also be an essential order, such that the second cause is total and immediate with respect to its effect just as the first cause is with respect to its own effect; and although the second cause is second and depends essentially on the first as regards its causation just as also regards its being, yet not in such a way that there is some immediate dependence of its effect on it and on a prior cause.

118. And when the proposition [from On Causes, n.115] says that “the first cause causes more” - this is true, because the first causes the second. An example of this can be posited in the case of essentially ordered causes, by the different way of causing; for if several material elements are posited in order in a composite thing with respect to the ultimate form, the first material element is not material with respect to the ultimate form (such that any part of it is perfected by the ultimate form), but only the ultimate material element is; for every prior material element is perfected by some prior form, which constitutes it as material with respect to a later form.