B. To the Second Initial Argument

92. To the second [n.9] I say that prior and posterior can be understood either actually or in aptitude. If you take them uniformly I concede that the posterior cannot naturally be without the prior. But if you take it that ‘posterior in aptitude’ cannot be without ‘prior actually’ it is not true; for if what is prior in aptitude does not exist, it is not prior actually, and also if it does exist, and the dependence of the posterior on it is taken away by something else that is prior to both, neither thus is it actually prior. And this is the way it is in the issue at hand. Hence I say that the accident is not actually posterior to the substance of the bread but only apt naturally to be posterior to it as to what is aptitudinally prior.

93. And if you argue that it has no special respect of posterior to God that it did not have before; therefore the priority of the bread is not more supplied now by divine action than before (and this could be an objection against the third main conclusion [n.30] and against its proof [nn.39-41], namely how the first extrinsic cause could supply the causality of any other extrinsic cause, since it could not have in itself the priority of the second cause, nor consequently does it seem to be the term of the posteriority in the caused thing that properly corresponds to that priority [sc. of the second cause]) - I reply: an unlimited unique priority can be the term of the posterior simply.

94. On the contrary: it is not the term now in a way different than before; but it was not the term totally before.

95. I reply: some respects were prior in the posterior (which is the foundation) that are not prior now; and this is possible because they came to the foundation extrinsically; those respects therefore had a term previously and do not have a term now (I concede), because they do not exist now. But the unique respect which before had a term in the simply First thing has a term in it now, and the termination of it by that one thing is sufficient for the being of the foundation of this sort of respect.

96. On the contrary: therefore the foundation did not before essentially depend on those other dependencies, because without the terms of those dependencies the foundation’s first respect to the simply First was totally sufficient for the being of the foundation; for what has whatever is required for its being in a prior stage does not depend for anything in a second stage.

97. I reply: this deduction seems well to touch on the order of second causes, and on the necessity of that order, because of which order the Philosopher is said to deny posteriority in the issue at hand [n.9]. Or if this order is not necessary, it is difficult to see how a second cause is cause of the effect, since that is not a cause without which the caused thing has the totality of its being from something else naturally prior (see on this point Ord. II d.1 n.143; also I d.8 n. 306).