1. Exposition of the Opinion

11. And answer is made that there is not [Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines], because if ‘this nature’ existed in its own supposit there would be the same existence for the nature as for the person; therefore now too, if ‘this person’ supplies the nature’s proper personhood as to the existing of the person, then it does so also as to the existing of the nature.

12. I reply that it does the supplying by terminating the dependence of the nature on the supposit, but it does not do so by positing that identity between them. Likewise, the existing of the nature and of the person, when the nature exists in its own supposit, are the same for the reason that person only states a double negation by reason of the nature [d.1 nn.44-47 supra]; therefore, however much person is taken away, the existing of nature is not taken away.

13. Again, if a part were to come newly to a whole that possesses perfect existence, the whole would not possess any of the whole’s existence from the part but would only have a new relation to the part, and the part would exist through the existence of the whole, as would be the case with a hand newly created for pre-existing Socrates. But human nature comes to Christ engrafted as it were into a pre-existing supposit; therefore it does not give the supposit any existence but only receives existence from it, and the supposit has only a new relation to it.

14. Further, an accident does not give any existence to the subject, because then there would be as many existences in Peter as accidents; human nature comes as it were accidentally to the Word because coming to what pre-exists in itself actually.

15. This position is made clear in another way, that just as quantity is compared to quality and to substance, and each of the latter is quantified by the same quantity (the subject formally because it receives it, and the quality as it were by accident because the quality is received in a quantified thing), so the Word and human nature exist with the same existence; and this existence is the same in supposit, and it gives as it were existence formally to the Word and per accidens to the nature united to the existing supposit, because the nature is received in the existence which the assumed nature participates; and so there is no need for there to be several existences there.