their co-location. Yet they have agreed in ruling this out. They have stated that they know as a matter of necessity that the separateness between the Creator, Exalted is He, and the world is greater than that between a substance and the accident inhering in it. This is clear: were there no greater separateness, it would be possible for the world to be like an accident within the Creator, with the Creator being self-subsisting substances, or for the Creator to be like an accident inhering in a substance. It is well known that this is even more impossible, by the agreement of all rational people. For the Creator subsists in Himself and sustains everything that subsists—far from being like an accident in a substance—while the world consists of self-subsisting substances.

This establishes that His separateness from the world is not merely in essence and time. Once this is established, the second premise is that two separate things whose separateness is not merely in essence and time must be spatially separate. This premise has already been presented, along with what was stated and conceded concerning the necessary knowledge supporting it.

Once his account of their argument is clear, his statement in reply is correct: the substrate is distinct in essence and time from what inheres in it, yet one inheres in the other, while the other is its substrate; they also share origination, contingency, and dependence upon a cause. These statements imply, however, that despite their distinctness in essence and time, they are co-located, sharing a spatial locus and certain features