that. If bodies differ because of accidents that are inseparable from them, then being different is itself inseparable from them.

To complete this point: things are alike or different by virtue of their very essences. We need not say that they are alike “in their essences”; an essence differs through its attributes. Thus, the correct position is that the Lord—glorified is He—is unlike His creation; rather, He differs from them in His very essence. We do not say that He is equal to them in His essence and differs from them only in His attributes.

The claim that bodies are composed of indivisible, self-subsisting substances that possess none of these accidents, but acquire these attributes when combined—just as fire possesses heat and water possesses moisture—is refuted by reason and sensory experience. For the parts of a particular body, such as this fire, have never been devoid of their nature as fire; rather, that nature is inseparable from them.

If it is said, “It was air and then became fire,” the reply is: “Yes, but those parts, while they were air, were never anything other than air.”

The transformation of one body into another is witnessed and familiar to ordinary people and specialists alike. Thus, jurists speak of wine turning into vinegar, excrement into ash, or a pig into salt, and similar cases. Likewise, a human being begins as a drop of semen, then becomes a clinging clot, then a lump of flesh.

If, then, it is said that the parts of the excrement dispersed, remaining those very same parts when it became ash, and that only their attributes changed—as colour and shape change—like