2. On the Action of the Blessed Virgin in the Formation of Christ’s Body

39. When applying this to the matter at hand, there seems to be doubt whether there corresponded to the three aforesaid motions [n.38 init.] three briefer motions in Mary, just as in us, and whether in these three motions Mary acted as second cause and the Holy Spirit as principal cause.

40. For if this be posited, then it will not be posited that anything later assumed by the Word existed at any prior time in a created supposit but only that it was corrupted into something assumed by the Word; nor would it be posited that anything in the changes, which elsewhere require a long succession, existed here without succession and suddenly, and that in them Mary cooperated in an instant with the Holy Spirit; for even if she cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the induction of the ultimate organic form that is the disposition for receiving the intellective soul, yet she would not have cooperated in those three previous motions; for what require succession in us are those three motions, and not the ultimate induction of the substantial form of the organic body.

41. But if the three motions are denied to have existed in this case, and it is said that the whole thing happened in an instant, namely that at some single time the blood was dispersed in the body of Mary and never moved during time into the womb, and was not thus shaped and condensed, but that there was in the ultimate instant of the time a shaped and dense body (just as is the case at the term of the three motions, if the three had preceded), I still say that the blessed Virgin could have cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the instantaneous action, both as to the substantial form of the term and as to the shape and density (even though they were suddenly induced).

42. My proof of this is that, if she had not been able to cooperate, this would have been for one of three causes: either because she did not have a less principal active causality with respect to the term induced or with respect to the terms induced; or because she was not able to use the active force for inducing the terms in this way; or in a third way because, although she was able, yet she was prevented by a greater force that did the whole thing and did it wholly.

43. The first is rejected because she did have the active power as do other women [n.37], and had it for the same terms for which other women also have it; but other women have a less principal active force with respect to the ‘where’, the shape, the condensing too of the substantial form.

44. And if you say, according to one of the three options [sc. the second, n.38], that there are in the whole many specifically different substantial forms for the heterogeneous parts, for inducing which all at once no mother has sufficient active force but one form must be induced prior in time to another being induced, and that so it is here - on the contrary: an active power that does not have an adequate term can act at the same time with respect to another term (because the reason that it can only act on one term at the same time is that the term is adequate to its power; and it most of all has power for many non-adequate terms if those terms are included in the first single term that is adequate to it); but no partial form is the adequate term of this sort of power but the form of the whole organic body is, otherwise the power would not be sufficient for the form of the whole; therefore since all the partial forms are included in the whole, which is the adequate term, it has power for all of them all at once.

45. The rejection of the second [n.42] is that some means are necessarily means for a more imperfect power that are not necessarily means for a more perfect power; for a natural agent has to proceed through determinate means, because it is subject to that order (for the order is fixed beforehand by the superior agent) - but a supreme agent, which is not subject to this order in its acting (because it fixed it voluntarily beforehand), does not have to proceed through these means in its acting. - From this I argue that the Holy Spirit and Mary are a more perfect agent than would a created father and Mary herself have been; therefore the means through which the action of a natural father and Mary would have had to proceed, if Mary had conceived by a man, were not necessary in the action of the Holy Spirit and Mary.

46. But if you say [Richard of Middleton] that this non-necessity of means is only because of the infinity of the power of the Holy Spirit, but that the necessity for means always remains equal as regard a created power, so that it cannot act with respect to the term unless it proceeds through the means necessary for it - on the contrary: if the term had been reached through the means, the agent would not produce the term by reason of the means, because the means do not then exist; so it would precisely then produce the term because it has then a power active with respect to the term; therefore if any power brings it about that the result not come through means but that the agent is disposed to the term as it would be disposed in the term if it had proceeded through means, then the same agent, which did not pass through means, can act in the same way as if it had passed through them. But the Holy Spirit could bring it about that there was here no passage through means, as the argument stated before proves [n.45]; and along with this can stand the fact that the active power of Mary would have been the same as, through the means of such a passage, it would have been; therefore by that active power she can as equally act on the term, having omitted the means, as if she had passed through the means before acting on the term.

47. The rejection of the third [n.42] is that the Holy Spirit acts freely, and therefore does not necessarily act according to the utmost of his power; therefore he can extend himself to something along with the causality of a second cause cooperating with him, and so he can supply the power of a natural father, or even act more efficaciously than a natural father (if there was one). And Mary will be able to cooperate according to her causality, because nothing is taken away from her by the fact that the Holy Spirit has his own causality, for he does not, by anticipation, take away her causality, although he does supply eminently the causality of the other cause with which she could be co-cause.

48. With these three positions rejected, the following argument can be formed: every active cause that has power with respect to some effect, and that is not prevented by another that totally causes the effect, can, in the instant in which the effect is produced, act for the producing of it; Mary was an active cause of this sort if other mothers are of such a sort, and this as a non principal active cause;     therefore etc     .

49. This is made clear by the authority of Damascene [n.25], that the Holy Spirit ‘gave her a susceptive power but also at the same time a generative power’; not that he gave her the fertility by which she cooperated, but she had it naturally, for she was not sterile, and she could, according to that fertility, have cooperated in the production of her Son if a natural father had generated him; but the active power of an inferior cause is remote when the superior cause is not acting, so that an inferior cause is only ever in proximate power for an effect when the superior cause acts, because the superior cause is determined first and, once it has been determined, the inferior cause cooperates necessarily if the inferior cause is a natural cause.

50. Now according to the common order, the active power of the mother is of a nature to be subordinate to the active power of the father, and so the proximate power for generation is of a nature to be conferred on the mother by the father, but not the remote power, which is her first act whereby she is said to be fertile.

51. This proximate power was not conferred on Mary by such a cause [sc. by the active power of a natural father] but only by the Holy Spirit, who is possessed of the force of the principal cause; and therefore the Holy Spirit gave her ‘generative force’, that is the proximate power of generating, according to the natural force whereby she was naturally fertile; but he gave her ‘susceptive force’ insofar as she was generative of the Word. For just as the nature - to which the generation was as to formal term - was only in obediential potency for being united with the Word, so the Mother only had obediential potency for being the Mother of the Word; for by this was she Mother of the Word, that the Word was subsisting in the nature united to him.