II. To the Principal Argument

14. To the argument for the opposite [n.7] I say that that proposition is not the contradictory if the distribution be taken precisely for the persons, because then what is first affirmed in the affirmation is not denied [n.9]; but if it negate the predicate from the first thing of God signified, namely from this God [n.11], it is false. - And this is what is usually said, because ‘such a universal negative does not contradict the term having simple supposition, although it do contradict the term having personal supposition’; but this [contradicting the term having simple supposition] seems probable if the maxim of the sophists is true - ‘when two things are included in any well-formed phrase, one of them is not referred to anything that the other is not referred to’;Peter of Spain Logical Summaries tr.12 n.32: “Hence the ancients say that the premises are double but the conclusion is not, because of a certain reason of this sort that they give: ‘whenever negation and distribution are included in the same phrase or single term, to whatever one of them is referred the other is too.’ Hence when a distribution, set down obliquely, does not reach the verb, neither does the negation, as in this case: ‘no thing seen is something seen’.” This sentence trades on a sophism, as if to see a no thing were like seeing a blue thing, so that to see nothing is really to see something. But ‘no’ is a negation and it is negating the word ‘seen’, not qualifying the word ‘thing’, so that ‘no thing seen’ means ‘not seeing’. In any event the sentence is false. ⁵ but in this quantifier ‘no’ there is included negation and distribution, therefore when the distribution has regard precisely to the supposits of such a nature, the negation too will have regard to the same, - and then the universal negation is true; but it would not be the contradictory of the first proposition, but this would be ‘God is not Father and Son and Holy Spirit’, where the same thing is denied as was first affirmed, - and this negation is false of the same thing, in the subject, of which the affirmation is true.See appendix point C. ⁶