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II. To the Principal Arguments
25. To the arguments for the opposite. - To the first authority of Augustine [n.1] -Sentences I d.21 ch.2 ‘the words of the authority occur...’ - the Master [Peter Lombard] responds in d.28 ch.6, that Wisdom stands for the hypostasis; “‘the essence is shown’ [n.1], namely it is shown that the Son is essence,” because the essential name stands for the person. The reason for this is stated: although wisdom is abstracted from the wise man, because he is the one operating, yet it still signifies the operative power or the operative principle, and therefore it is not abstracted with highest abstraction, because the operative power in some way concerns something; and, because of such sort of concretion, it is some way conceded that Wisdom is born, but not in any way that the essence is born. But as to Augustine sometimes saying that the Son is essence of essence, this is expounded in the following question ‘because this does not prove that the essence is generated or generating, but that it is something from which the Son is generated’ [nn.98, 101].
26. To the statement of Richard [n.2]. If he intends to blame the Master there, as appears from his words, - since the doctrine of the Master, and this one especially, is confirmed by a General Council in the chapter cited above [n.12], I deny Richard11 by holding to the Master. And as to his saying that the Master adduces many authorities against himself, the Master well expounds them, as will be plain in the following question [n.100]; not, however, that he has no authority for himself, but he does have the authority of the Universal Church, which is the greatest, because Augustine says Letter against Fundamentus ch.5 n.6: “I would not believe the Gospel if I did not believe the Church,” -which Church, just as it has decreed which books are to be held as authentic in the canon of the Bible, so too it has decreed which books are to be held as authentic in the books of the doctors, as is plain in the canon, and after the authority of the canon there is not found in the Corpus Iuris any writing as authentic as that of Master Peter in the chapter cited before.
27. To the reason about ‘communicating’ [n.3] I say that production has the thing produced for its first term, and I say that this ‘first term’ is the adequate term; and in this way the Philosopher says Metaphysics 7.8.1033b16-18 that the composite is first generated, because it is what first has being through production, that is, adequate being.
28. However, in the composite the form is the formal term of generation, but it is not the term per accidens, - as is plain from the Philosopher Physics 2.1.193b12-18, where he proves that form is nature by the fact that ‘generation is natural because it is the way to nature, but it is the way to form, 
therefore etc 
.’, - which reason would be nothing if form were only the term per accidens of generation. And in the same way he intends that form and end coincide in the same thing, which is not true of the end of the thing generated, but is true of the end of generation. Therefore form is truly the end of generation.
29. The thing, then, that generates has one relation to the first term - which term is called the thing produced or generated - and it has another relation to the formal term. And in creatures each relation is real, because each relation has terms really distinct, and there is a real dependence of each produced thing on what produces it. But in the proposed case [sc. of God] the producer has to the thing first produced a real relation, because it has a real distinction and a real origin, but to the formal term in the thing produced it does not have a real relation, because it does not have a real distinction, without which distinction there is no real relation. ‘To produce’ then in divine reality states a real relation, but ‘to communicate’ states a relation of origin, and as it were of idea, concomitant with that real relation; there is an example of this about the principle ‘in which’; in creatures this principle is really referred to the product, just as the ‘what’ principle is (for the art and the builder are referred to the same genus of cause, Metaphysics 5.2.1013b30-33), but here [sc. the case of God] the ‘in which’, because it is not distinct, does not have a real relation to the thing produced (I d.7 n.13), - so not conversely either, the formal term not having a real relation to the producer.
30. When it is said, therefore, that these relations are opposite, namely to communicate and to be communicated [n.3], - I say that they are relations of reason, opposite according to their proper ideas, although they are necessarily concomitant with some real opposed relations, namely to produce and to be produced; but yet the latter and the former relations are not formally of the same relative things.
31. By this same fact is given an answer to the second [n.3], that no extreme of one correlation is formally the same as some extreme of another. For the communicator and the producer, although they come together in the same supposit (because the nature is said properly to be communicating itself just as it is said to be properly communicated12), yet the communicating does not state formally the same relation as producing qua producing does, - for to be communicated and to be produced do not state the same either, nor do they first denominate the same.
32. To the logical arguments [nn.4-6].
When it is first argued about predication ‘per se’ [n.4], I say that essence is not predicated ‘in the first mode per se’ of the Father, nor is it predicated formally. - When you prove it ‘because not per accidens’ [n.4], I say that, as in creatures, not every predication is either ‘per se’ or ‘per accidens’, taking accident properly, as when an accident is predicated of a subject; for the genus is not predicated per se of the difference, nor is it predicated per accidens, - because neither of them is accident of the other of them, but the difference is there a middle that is extraneous or inferior to the genus, and contracts it, which inferior can be called ‘accidental’ to the superior, that is, extraneous, but it is not properly an ‘accident’; but in divine reality not everything is ‘per se’ the same, that is, formally,13 nor yet is anything of another ‘per accidens’ properly,14 but something is the same as something by absolute identity, without formal identity, - and thus it is in the intended proposition.
33. To the other I say that this proposition ‘father is essence’15 can be distinguished, because ‘father’ can be taken adjectivally or substantively. In the second way it signifies the person to whom belongs paternity, and I concede that the proposition is true by identity, because a substantive can be predicated of anything by identity. In the first way it signifies the very property denominatively, and in this way the Master expounds [I d.27 ch.1 n.237] that to be father is the same as to have generated;16 in this way this proposition ‘essence is father’ is false, because it signifies that father is formally predicated of the subject.
34. When therefore you argue about subject and property, I say that when the property can be predicated by a predication of the same idea as that by which the subject is predicated, the property can be inferred from the subject when it has the same mode of predicating [n.24], - but when not, not. Here the subject - if it is subject - can be predicated by identity, the property - if it is property - cannot be, but only formally, because it is an adjective [n.23].
35. To the other, ‘essence is father of the Son’ [n.5]:
A certain doctor [Henry of Ghent] repeats the opinions of others, the first of Master Alexander [of Hales, ST Ia d.20 ad 5], who distinguished this proposition ‘essence is father of the Son’ in the way the preceding one, namely ‘essence is father’, was already distinguished [n.33], - because ‘father’ can be taken adjectivally and substantively, and in the first way he says it is false and the consequence [‘therefore father of the Son is essence’] not valid, - in the second way he says it is true. Another opinion he repeats from Master Praepositinus, who says that it is simply true, for which Praepositinus has two reasons, - one by conversion (because if the converting proposition is true, the converted proposition will be simply true): “this proposition is true ‘father of the Son is essence’, therefore essence is father of the Son;” the other reason is that “this proposition is simply true ‘essence is father’: either then it is father of someone or of no one; if of no one, then there is altogether no father, - if of someone, and if of none but the Son, then essence is father of the Son.”
36. Against Master Alexander - nay against both masters - he argues thus and proves “the term ‘father’ is only held adjectivally, since names that are imposed from an active and passive power (as are master and disciple, father and son, builder, etc.) are only significative adjectivally, and this from the respect that they have to something else, which is what the power from which they are imposed has regard to. But whenever something has the idea of adjective, or of adjacent, from a respect to something else, the more determinate its respect the more it has the idea of adjacent or of adjective, and the less it has this idea the more indeterminate it is, - as is plain about the respect of the infinitive mode, which grammarians say has or says an infinite inclination to the supposit and can supposit more than other modes can [Priscian, Institutiones Grammaticae VIII ch.12 n.63, ch.13 n.69], because the others also have a finite inclination to the supposit, but the former has an infinite one; but an infinitive and an adjective in the neuter gender are more substantive than in the masculine or feminine. Therefore since ‘father of the Son’ has a finite and express relation - but it is not so when the term ‘father’ is posited per se - therefore, although it could be held substantively when saying ‘essence is father’, yet it is only held adjectively when saying ‘essence is father of the Son’, and thus this proposition ‘essence is father of the Son’ is simply false.”17
37. “It is also plain that the first argument of Praepositinus is not valid, ‘father of the Son is essence, therefore essence is father of the Son’, by conversion [n.35], because it should be converted in this way: ‘therefore something that is essence is father of the Son’; just as this proposition ‘an individual is man’ is not converted in this way ‘therefore man is an individual’, but it in this other way ‘therefore something that is a man is an individual’. - Likewise the second reason [n.35] is not valid. When it is argued ‘essence is father, therefore father either of someone or no one’, - one must say that it does not follow, because of the fallacy of figure of speech (because as soon as ‘of someone or of no one’ is added the combination is otherwise than was first being supposed), and one must say that it is father of no one, that is, it is not father of anyone; and it does not follow from this that it is not father, because of the fallacy of figure of speech, but there only follows ‘therefore the property of paternity does not belong to it’.”
38. So he responds in a third way, that this proposition ‘essence is father of the Son’ is simply false, because of the aforesaid reason [n.36], because the term ‘father’ here is only held adjectivally.18
39. Against his way of speaking [n.38] I argue thus:
What is included essentially in the concept of something as a part of the concept cannot be excluded from it under whatever mode it is conceived, because if it is conceived under some mode and that part is not included, then the mode is repugnant to the idea of the concept which is conceived. When, therefore, in the concept of a relative [sc. father], from the fact that the concept is relative - not as conceived relatively - its correlative is necessarily included as its term (because it can neither be nor be understood without it, just as not without the term either), then in whatever way it is conceived, whether adjectivally or substantively, the correlative is always included as term, and so in no way can it be understood as absolute; the point is confirmed about filiation [sc. filiation is correlative in the same way].
40. Again, then [sc. if Henry’s position is correct] this proposition ‘father of the Son is essence’ would be incongruous, and a non-substantive adjective does not supposit incongruously. Indeed in this case in the subject [‘father of the Son’] father is determined by the Son, to whom it has a determinate respect [n.36].
41. Therefore I hold the opinion of Alexander, distinguishing as he does, that the substantive is true and the adjectival is false.
42. To the reasons of Praepositinus: I say that the converse [‘essence is father of the Son’; n35] is true substantively, - adjectivally it is incongruous, because the masculine [sc. ‘father’ in the converting proposition] cannot be made substantive; to his second reason [n.35] I say that essence is father, and of someone, - and I concede too that it is father of the Son.
43. But when it is argued in the principal reason ‘if essence is father of the Son, therefore the Son is son of essence’ [n.5], I deny the consequence.
When it is proved through that ‘mutual consequence’ in relatives, I say that the mutual consequence holds in those relatives that are first relatives [father-son]; it holds also of those that are referred through relations [paternity-filiation] - if they are said formally as relations of them, - just as if formally Socrates is father of Plato, then conversely, formally Plato is son of Socrates. But in those relatives that are not referred first nor are denominated formally from those relations, but the relation is predicated of one of them by identity, that [mutual] consequence is not valid, because in that case more is indicated in the consequent than in the antecedent; for in the antecedent is noted the identity of the relation with that of which it is said, but in the consequent is indicated that the other thing is formally referred to it: for since it is said ‘the Son is son of essence’, from the force of the construction there is indicated that the essence is the proper correlative of that which is the Son, and so the Son is formally son of essence; but the antecedent does not indicate that the relation of paternity agrees with the essence formally, but only by identity.
44. To the final one [n.6] I say: when you take ‘the generated insofar as it is generated is something’, I deny it. And when you say ‘it is not nothing’, I say (as has often been said before, I d.1 n.58, d.2 nn.422-423, 431, d.3 n.326), that between contradictories there is a middle with ‘insofar as’, such that neither is present with ‘insofar as’, just as man ‘insofar as he is man’ is neither white nor ‘insofar as he is man’ is he non-white; but these two contradictory propositions are false together; for the true contradictory is ‘man not insofar as he is man is white’; so here ‘the generated not insofar as it is generated is something’, because the idea of being generated is not the formal idea of the inherence of the predicate, although the generated - taken formally in itself - is essence by identity.
45. What then should be said of ‘generated insofar as generated’? - One can concede that ‘generated insofar as generated’ is the person, or subsisting, but it does not further follow ‘ therefore insofar as generated it is something’, taking something for essence, - because of the formal non-identity of the idea of person with essence, etc . [I d.2 nn.388-410].