3. To the Third and Fourth

122. Answer to the third [n.6] will be stated below [question 6, nn.310, 327, 329].

123. As to the fourth [n.7], I concede that beatitude does not consist in an action of the category of action, because it is not simply the perfection of the agent, as is proved [there, n.7]; now operation is not such action but is action taken equivocally, as said in Ord. I d.3 n.604.

124. As to the first confirmation [n.7], the answer is plain through the same point, that the change from non-blessed to blessed is not from non-agent to agent, but is from non-operating to operating.

125. As to the second confirmation [n.7], a certain person says [Aquinas, Sent. IV d.49 q.1 a.2] that “in an act are two things, namely the substance of the act and the form by which it has its perfection; according to substance the principle is the natural power, but according to form the principle of it is the habit. If therefore the habit is acquired, we will be totally cause of our act; if it is infused, the perfection will be from the exterior cause that causes the habit. Now our act is not posited to be beatitude save by reason of its perfection; therefore, we are not cause of our beatitude but God is.”

126. Against this: the essentially prior cannot depend on any cause that the essentially posterior does not depend on; an act is essentially prior to its form, otherwise the form would not necessarily require the act for its being;The act of a habit, or the form here, falls into the definition of the habit, since a habit is the habit of such and such an act. But what falls into the definition of a thing is essentially prior to it. ⁴⁴ therefore if we are the cause of the substance [of the act], the form will depend on us, and only in some class of cause, because nothing seems to depend essentially on what is not a cause of it, speaking of any first act.

127. Again, the form is only a condition of the act; now the power that elicits the act does not elicit it bare, but with such and such a condition or circumstance; therefore, it is cause not only of the substance of the act but also of the form of the act.

128. Again, that the habit be a cause distinct from the power and a cause of something distinct (namely distinct from the power) does not seem probable; first because it is only a second cause in respect of the power (now second and first cause do not have distinct acts proper to them, because then with respect to neither would the former be first cause and the latter second); second because the effect, proper to the habit, would necessarily be an absolute form, if relation is not per se the term of an agent or an action; and it is not probable that the action is formed in this way, because then the action that reaches the beatific object would have to include two absolutes.

129. There is, then, another response, that the blessed is the second active cause of his beatitude as far as concerns the absolute that is in beatitude, and this if the will is the active cause of its beatific volition (about which later [in Rep. IVA d.49 q.10 nn.7-9, q.11 nn.3-9]).