2. Rejection of the Opinion

26. These reasons do not establish the proposed conclusion.

The first does not because - if it were valid - it would prove that God could make the nature to exist and at the same time not be singular, or if he made it singular first with this singularity, he could make it, while it remained the same, singular with another singularity; for ‘nature as such’ naturally precedes itself as singular. But if it be denied that nature can be made to exist save as singular determinately with this singularity, and that it cannot remain save under the same singularity, much more does this follow about the singular nature and its personhood, because this is its ultimate actuality.

27. The second reason seems to be at fault because the mode that truly is proper to one genus does not belong to anything else of another genus; for just as it is not proper to it, so also it is incompossible with anything else.

28. Nor does what is adduced about a separated accident prove the proposed point, because it does not have the mode that is proper to substance; for substance exists naturally per se, that is, in its existence it is not inclined with natural aptitude to anything else - but it is not so in the case of the separated accident.a

a.a [Interpolation] Nor is the substance formally dependent on the divine person such that the accident is not inclined with natural aptitude to a subject or the nature to its proper personhood.

29. And if the remark of Metaphysics 5.14.1020a33-b13 be adduced that a difference in the case of substance has the mode of quality, I reply: the Philosopher does not understand this of the proper mode of quality as a genus, but intends there to posit a distinction in this word ‘quality’, and that ‘one of its mode is that according to which a difference in the case of substance is called quality’. This mode of the word ‘quality’ does not belong to any species of the genus of quality as it is a genus, nor is the mode proper to the genus of quality, but is only a mode of what is ‘quality’ in general. Therefore in the issue at hand one must show that the distinction between created nature and created personhood is from something else than from this.

30. The third reason does not seem conclusive, because the reason of the major is that because of potentiality in one extreme and because of actuality in the other extreme they are not univocal in fact, since they are primarily diverse (as is plain of subject and accident, which are disposed to each other as potency and act); this reason is not conclusive about things maximally distant, namely the Word and created nature, because neither is the Word formally the act of the created nature nor conversely is created nature formally potential with respect to the Word, because then they would be of a nature to become naturally one thing.