II. To the Principal Arguments

63. Through this is the answer plain to all the authorities adduced [nn.54-58], -because it is for this reason that Augustine says the Father inspirits principally [n.54]; for he himself expounds it: “Therefore I said ‘principally’, because the Son has from the Father the fact that he inspirits.”

64. However, a certain doctor [Bonaventure] says that the Father inspirits principally and more principally, but the Son only principally, because the Son has authorship with respect to the Holy Spirit while the Father has authorship both with respect to the Son and with respect to the Holy Spirit, insofar as he inspirits. - But another doctor [Henry] contradicts him, because there is not there any comparison properly speaking in some one form, but there is only there comparison in words; just as [the Archangel] Michael is said to be holier than the demon, where there is only a comparison in words and not in any from common to each extreme (but the form is only in one extreme and not in the other), so principality is in the Father, so that it is the same thing for the Father to inspirit more principally and for him to inspirit principally.

65. As to the other from Jerome [n.55], I say that he alone is said to be proprietor who does not, in possessing a thing, depend on another, but a borrower is said to be he who, in using a thing, depends on another and is not properly a proprietor. The Father, therefore, who has inspiriting force from himself, is rightly said properly to inspirit, but the Son does not thus properly inspirit - that is from himself -, although he does properly inspirit, that is not improperly or imperfectly.

66. Through the same point [n.62] the answer is plain to Hilary when he says that the Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son [n.56]. - Yet a distinction is drawn, because something determined by this preposition ‘through’ with its causal force is compared either to a transitive verb or to an intransitive one; if to a transitive verb, then sub-authorship is noted in the causal force of this preposition, as ‘the Father creates through the Son’; if to an absolute or intransitive verb, then authorship is noted in the causal force of this preposition, and this either authorship of efficient causality, as ‘man lives through God’, or authorship of formal causality, as ‘man is wise through wisdom’.

67. And through the same point [n.62] the response is plain to Richard [n.57]. For the Father, with the same fecundity, inspirits the Holy Spirit immediately, but, insofar as he gives to the Son the virtue of inspiriting whereby the Son inspirits, the Father can be said to inspirit mediately; nor is there here any difference of form in perfection and imperfection, or anything which might posit diversity in act, but only a different way of having the same virtue, - because the Father has it from himself and the Son not from himself but from the Father.

68. To the final one [n.58] I say that the proposition is true about cause and caused, because of the fact that, in ordered causes, there is a different and a more principal virtue of causing in the prior cause, but it is not so in a principle which is not a cause, because there is not there a different virtue of being principle. Thus it is in the intended proposition, and therefore the first principle is not more of a principle than the second, just as neither is a superior cause more of a cause if it causes along with the second cause by the same causative virtue as that by which the second cause causes.