But it is not only not incompatible with the divine power to produce and preserve a thing prior without a posterior, and consequently it will be able to sustain a substance without an accident; but it is also not incompatible with the omnipotence of God to produce and preserve a substance existing under an absolute accident inhering in it without a local change of substance and to destroy that accident and to preserve the substance. For what believer may dare to say, if God wills to separate or destroy an absolute accident inhering in a subject without the destruction of the substance, that He is compelled to transfer the substance or some part of it from place to place?
For if natural causes expel many absolute accidents and introduce them into that space though not locally changed, could not God without the moving of the substance locally preserve it, and also destroy an absolute accident inhering in it; even, if He should be willing, without the introduction of any other?
Again, God can destroy a thing posterior and separate a thing prior from its nature, so that He may permit it to excite the proper motion. Therefore, God can destroy every accident of that wood and separate the substance of the wood from its nature, that He may excite the proper motion. When this has been done, either this substance of the wood will be locally moved, and this is the intention; namely, that every absolute accident inhering in a substance can be destroyed without transference of the substance or any part of it from place to place; or this substance will be moved locally, which can not be granted.
From which, this substance is separated from its own nature. At one time, because it could tranfer itself in respect to no difference of place; not downwards, since it may not have the principle of penetrating the earth, as neither when it had its own accidents; nor can it move itself upwards, as neither before; and by virtue of the same neither forwards nor backwards; nor will it be moved by some natural external agent, as is obvious by induction. At another time, because, either the whole substance will change the whole place, which can not be granted, or because the parts of the substance, which were before separated, come together, as it were, into one point, which can not be granted; since there may not be there such a principle of being moved. And, if there were, there could not be a stronger reason why they should meet at one point more than at another; nor could there be any reason why an intermediate part should be moved to one intermediate point more than to another point near the end.
Again, if while preserving the whole substance of that wood, God should both destroy all the absolute accidents of one part and preserve the absolute accidents of the other part, which is not impossible with God, as neither is it impossible for Him to destroy a half of the whiteness of one white body and preserve the other half of the whiteness; and at the same time while doing this separate the whole substance of wood from its nature, where would that half of that substance go? Could that part of the substance, all of whose accidents were destroyed by a proper virtue, enter into another part of a substance or separate itself totally from that part? It is not possible to concede that any such result might be able to be done by created power. Therefore, that part of the substance separated from its nature will remain locally unmoved; although God through His omnipotence may remove all absolute accidents inhering in it by destroying or even separating them. Therefore, God can preserve a substance locally unmoved and destroy every absolute accident inhering in it.
Again, every material substance is naturally in a place either circumscriptively or definitively, especially if there be a place surrounding it. Therefore, substance existing by natural accidents is in a place and is present in a place; and as it is prior naturally to the accidents themselves, so it is naturally present in the place itself before its accidents may be present in the same place. Therefore, no contradiction is involved in the statement that God may preserve a substance present in a place without local translation of any part of a substance without the presence of accidents at that place. It is, therefore, established that He, who spake and all things were made, can by the same virtue preserve a substance immovable locally and destroy or separate the absolute accidents inhering in it.
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