a. First Argument

285. First as follows: a creature cannot act instrumentally for a term of creation, according to him [nn.276-280], and this, as he says elsewhere [ST Ia q.45 a.5], is above all manifest about corporeal substance (of which sort a sacrament is). But the disposition previous to grace, of the sort he posits [n.279], is a term of creation;     therefore etc     .

286. Proof of the minor:

The previous disposition is a supernatural form, and anything such is as equally incapable of being drawn from the natural potency of the receiving subject, as the subject too is equally in obediential potency to any such form.

Again, since the disposition, according to him, is a disposition that necessitates for grace when there is no impediment in the receiver, it follows that in a non-indisposed soul the disposition and the grace come to be at the same time. Therefore this disposition comes to be in an instant, just as grace does. And the fact is plain, because in the introduction of a form there is succession only as to parts of the movable subject or as to parts of the form itself. But neither is present here. The first is not because the subject is indivisible. The second is not because then there could only be degrees of grace if the disposition were to be continuously larger and smaller. But it is possible for a smallest disposition to be introduced in someone who receives a sacrament, just as it is possible for a smallest grace to be infused into him. But the smallest grace only requires the smallest disposition, so there is no succession there as to different degrees in accord with which the disposition is successively introduced.

The minor is also plain in a third way, that an instrument only acts in virtue of the principal agent. Therefore, if the instrument can act over a period of time for the disposition, then it follows that God would be acting over time or successively for the same disposition. The consequent seems unacceptable, both because of the infinite power of the agent, and because of the supreme capacity of a receiving subject that does not have a contrary.

287. So therefore we may suppose from these three proofs that this disposition preceding grace that they set down could be introduced in an instant.a

a.a [Note added by Scotus] But the minor is denied [sc. by Aquinas], because what does not per se come to be is not created; a form does not per se come to be while the composite does, just as the form is not per se existent. Therefore the form is not created, because the form would not come to be by the creation.

     Again, a form that lacks an operation that the subject has no share in along with the form is not created (the proof is from On the Soul 1.1.403a10-12, “If the soul has nothing proper to itself, it is not separable from the body,” and from Generation of Animals 2.3.736b27-29, “It remains then that the intellect alone comes from outside and alone is divine; because the operation of the body has no share in its operation”). Therefore only the intellect that comes from outside, because it has an action that the body does not share any supernatural accident with, lacks an action that the subject does not share in with it. The same point is admitted about grace.

     In response to the proof of the minor it is said that the disposition is drawn from the obediential potency of the subject, therefore it is not created.

     On the contrary: every obediential potency has regard to a natural form in the subject; therefore it also has regard to some agent, because to every natural passive power there corresponds an active natural power, according to the Commentator [Authorities from Aristotle 1.137].This reply seems to be against all three of the arguments given here against the truth of the minor premise [sc. the minor that the disposition previous to grace, if it is posited, will be something that has to be created directly by God, and so not an instrument God uses for creation, n.285]. For if, as the reply says, the obediential potency in a creature is relative to the active power that realizes it, and if this active power is God acting alone without a created instrument, and if the disposition previous to grace is drawn from the obediential power, then it will be something created, regardless of whether it is a form, and regardless of whether it is unlike the intellect and grace (which are confessedly created). ⁵

288. But sacraments commonly cannot have their action in an instant, the proof of which is that words and many other things are commonly required for sacraments (as will be plain below [about each sacrament individually]), and these cannot have their being in an instant; and so they have it in time. Therefore they cannot do their natural action in an instant, and so not their supernatural action either. For, according to them [n.278], an instrument has its own action when it has the action that surpasses its own virtue.

289. Also, if any single syllable of the whole wording that is instrumental to the sacrament is imagined to have its being in an instant (which is a fiction, because the formation of this syllable involves local motion of air and motion is not in an instant), the claim is not saved. For this syllable will be either the first syllable or the last or in between, and, whichever one it is posited to be, from the fact that it and no other syllable acts for the disposition caused in an instant, it follows that it alone would suffice, and that it alone among all the others would possess the nature of the sacrament. For all the others beside it do nothing either instrumentally or in any other way for the preceding disposition. And this is unacceptable, because in such sacramental wording no single syllable is posited as the sacrament but the whole of it is.

290. But if you further imagine that the last syllable is the sacrament by way of completion, and that it performs the action attributed to the sacrament not by its own virtue but by virtue of all the preceding ones (just as “the last drop wears away the stone in virtue of all the preceding ones,” Physics 8.3.253b14-21), this is nothing. For in such cases the last stage only ever finally causes the effect in virtue of the preceding stages because the preceding stages have left behind some disposition preparing the way for the term. But these preceding syllables do not leave any such disposition behind before the last syllable;     therefore etc     .