If the Creator of all, according to the good pleasure of His will, can make, preserve and maintain a thing prior without a posterior, there ought to be no doubt but that the same power may be able to produce and preserve any substance whatever without any absolute accident formally inhering in it. For if the virtue of God preserves and maintains an accident without a subject, will He not have so much power that He may preserve and maintain a substance without any accident? For since a substance may be more perfect and more actual, approaching also more nearly to divine subsistence than an accident may be, it may also depend less upon an accident than an accident upon a substance. But according to reason it may be characteristic of a substance for it to exist per se, but an accident naturally depends upon another. It also depends more upon a substance than conversely. No believer, who believes and holds that the accidents are in the sacrament of the altar without a subject, ought to doubt that a substance could by the same virtue subsist without an accident. Again, no contradiction appears in the statement that an absolute thing may exist without all that which is neither a part of it nor an essential cause of it. But no accident is a cause nor a part of the substance in which it inheres; therefore, no contradiction is involved in the statement that a substance can subsist per se without an accident.
Again, it is necessary that everything, which is not God, if it really have being, be really produced by God; therefore, if a substance is produced, an accident could not be, unless God of his own free will had given being to it. But the divine power is subject to no creature; therefore, there is no contradiction in the statement that, if a substance is created, an accident may not acquire being, if it should be pleasing to God.
Again, if for the being of a substance the being of an accident may necessarily follow, this can not happen except by virtue of one of three reasons: either because an accident is part of a substance and a whole can not be without its parts; or because a substance is the effect of an accident and an effect presupposes its cause; or because a substance is the natural cause of an accident; and, if a cause is posited, the effect follows in order. But that an accident may not be part of a substance is as manifest to the Saints as to the philosophers. Since it may be known to all that a substance may be composed of substances and not of accidents; therefore, no accident could be a part of any substance.
Nor does it suffice to say, that a substance is an effect or a cause of an accident; since it was shown before that the omnipotent God, to whom all creatures yield perfect obedience, can suspend the action of a natural cause and preserve an effect without a secondary cause.
From the previous statements, it is especially gathered, that it will not be denied that the omnipotent God, to whom every word is not impossible, will be able to preserve a substance without an accident inhering in it; as it is not impossible for Him to preserve a thing prior without a posterior, which can be confirmed thus far by another reason. For the omnipotence of God has no less efficacy over all the individuals of some species than created virtue may have over a single individual of the same species.
Therefore, if created virtue can make this substance without this accident, if some individual of that species of accident was designated, could not the infinite power of God make this substance without any individual of any species of accident? And for the same reason, if imperfect created virtue has so much efficacy that it could preserve some substance without any individual of some species of accident, will not infinite virtue have so much efficacy that it may conserve the same substance without any individual of the whole genus of that accident?
Therefore, since the sun could preserve wood without any tangible quality, could not God preserve wood without any color? And if a natural cause; namely, fire, can preserve water without the cold, will not the immeasurableness of divine power have strength enough to preserve water without any tangible quality? From this it seems probable that since inferior causes, impotent except with the assistance of divine power, can preserve and produce a substance without this and that accident, it will not be impossible for God to maintain a substance without any accident. And if it should please God, He could bestow being upon any substance whatever without any accident; for God has made many things wonderful and contrary to the common course of nature.
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