What is common and general is predicated of the
included particulars. Essence, then, is common as being a
form εἶδος, form, class,
species., while subsistence is particular. It is
particular not as though it had part of the nature and had not the
rest, but particular in a numerical sense, as being individual.
For it is in number and not in nature that the difference between
subsistences is said to lie. Essence, therefore, is predicated of
subsistence, because in each subsistence of the same form the essence
is perfect. Wherefore subsistences do not differ from each other
in essence but in the accidents which indeed are the characteristic
properties, but characteristic of subsistence and not of nature.
For indeed they define subsistence as essence along with
accidents. So that the subsistence contains both the general and
the particular, and has an independent existence These words are
found only in Cod. Reg. 2927., while essence has not an independent
existence but is contemplated in the subsistences. Accordingly
when one of the subsistences suffers, the whole essence, being capable
of suffering The words οὐσία
παθητή and πέπονθε are omitted in
some editions., is held to have
suffered in one of its subsistences as much as the subsistence
suffered, but it does not necessarily follow, however, that all the
subsistences of the same class should suffer along with the suffering
subsistence.