a. Exposition of the Opinion

10. The reason posited for the first article is of the following sort: the completion of enjoyment is found in the enjoyable object’s being present to the intellect and moving the intellect to an act of seeing, and in its being thereby present to the will and attracting the will to enjoy necessarily the presence of the end; but the intellect is necessarily moved by this [hypostatic] union; therefore the enjoyment of the will too follows necessarily on the movement of the intellect.

11. Proof of the minor: if the eye could, on the presence of light in itself, see the light existing in itself, then necessarily the light would be present as moving the eye to an act of seeing; but the intellect can see something present in itself; therefore since, by this [hypostatic] union, the uncreated light is present to the intellect, then necessarily it will be present to the intellect as moving it to an act of seeing. There is confirmation from Augustine, On the Trinity 13.9 n.12, where he argues a minore about the double union [n.3].“For if the Son of God by nature has been made son of man, how much more credible it is that the sons of man by nature should become sons of God by grace...; and it is a greater thing to be united to God in person than in grace.” ³⁰

12. Further, powers are founded in the essence of the soul and not conversely;     therefore the order whereby what is in the essence overflows into the powers is more essential than the reverse; but blessedness cannot be in the powers without necessarily overflowing into the essence, so it cannot be in the essence without overflowing into the powers; the essence of the soul, by this special falling into it [sc. of union with the person of the Word], is beatified as much as it can be beatified, because it is made one with God; therefore etc     .

13. There is a confirmation in that blessedness is in the essence primarily before it is in the powers; for blessedness exists in what is supreme in a nature capable of blessedness, and the essence has more the idea of being supreme with respect to the powers than the reverse; but blessedness cannot be posited in the essence unless there is a certain falling of the enjoyable object into the essence; now the falling in that exists in [hypostatic] union is supreme, and by it is nature supremely elevated.

14. A way to make the first argument [n.10] clear is as follows, that sometimes an intellectual habit is necessary for the representation of the object (as in the case of angels), and that sometimes the habit only facilitates the power so that the object may work on it more easily (as in our own case); a habit of glory is not posited in the [hypostatic] union for the first reason, because God is not present to it as enjoyable object by anything that formally informs the nature, but he only represents himself voluntarily as enjoyable object to a power able immediately to enjoy him; therefore if the habit in question is required for the sake of easiness, or for the sake of some elevation of the power so that it can be moved easily by such object, then even without such a habit it can absolutely be moved by the object, because the power of an assumed nature is supremely inclined and elevated and proportioned to the enjoyable object; for because the power of an assumed nature is elevated by the [hypostatic] union to the being of supernatural nature, therefore is the power itself sufficiently elevated so as to be able to enjoy; so this union with the Word supplies, as far as enjoyment is concerned, whatever the habit of glory could do in the other cases.