Origin of Power.—First, then, with regard to the primary origin of active and moving powers, we lay down the following conclusions:
1st. There is some absolute power—that is, a first act which has no need of producing any second act.
2d. Absolute power is an objective reality.
3d. Absolute power is uncreated.
4th. Absolute power is the virtuality, or extrinsic terminability, of the act by which God is.
5th. Absolute power is not modified by the production of effects—that is, by its extrinsic termination.
6th. The beings thus produced are extrinsic terms of God’s power; and although, owing to their intrinsic perfection, which may be greater or less, they can be related to one another by an intrinsic foundation, yet their “entitative distances” have only an extrinsic foundation—to wit, God’s omnipotence.
Some of these propositions are so obvious that they might have been omitted but for the object we have in view of pointing out the parallelism of absolute power with space and duration.
The first of these conclusions is proved thus: All first act which naturally needs to produce some second act has an intrinsic and natural ordination to something distinct from itself; for all effect is really distinct from its efficient principle. But it cannot be admitted without absurdity that every first act has such an intrinsic and natural ordination; for, if everything were thus ordained to something else, all things would tend to some subordinate end, while there would be no supreme end at all; for nothing that is ordained to something else can rank as the supreme end. On the other hand, no subordinate ends can be admitted without a supreme end. And therefore there must be some first act which has no intrinsic necessity of producing any second act. Such a first act is altogether absolute.
The second conclusion is evident. For what we call here “a first act” is not an imperfect and incomplete act, since it needs no termination; nor is it a result of mental abstraction and analysis, but a perfect principle of real operations; for the epithet “first,” by which we characterize it, does not imply that it lacks anything in its entity, but, on the contrary, it means that it already contains eminently the whole reality of the effects which it is competent to produce. Hence it is clear that, if such effects are objective realities, the first act on which their production depends is an objective reality, and a much better one too.