its occurrence; otherwise, it would depend on a separate cause,” is false. This may be answered as follows:

We do not concede that anything whose affirmation or negation is not sufficiently accounted for by the essence alone must depend on a separate cause. That would follow only if the essence were incapable of acts connected with it. If it is capable of such acts, then anything newly established with respect to it may depend upon acts within its power that subsist in it. Thus, the essence alone does not entail this, yet neither does it depend on a separate cause. The term “essence” is ambiguous and open to confusion, and this ambiguity has given rise to confusion concerning attributes and acts.

He may therefore be asked: What do you mean by His essence? Do you mean the essence considered apart from the acts within its power and the things it wills that subsist in it? Or do you mean the essence capable of whatever it wills, including what pertains to it and what does not subsist in it?

If you mean the former, the entailment is valid. For if an essence is posited in which none of these things subsists, then whatever is affirmed of it or denied of it would depend on a separate cause unless the essence itself sufficed to account for it, since nothing that it has the power and will to do subsists in it.

But it may be said: Establishing this entailment does not constitute a proof unless the essence is actually of that kind. Whether the essence is actually of that kind is the central question and the very point in dispute. The proof therefore cannot be valid until the conclusion to be proved has been established; yet if that conclusion were established, there would be no need for the proof. You would thus have begged