De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 16
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 691D–691E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/16/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[691D]
Chapter 16. He refutes the fifth opinion, that of the Megarians, who deny all potency toward the future.

[691D–691E]
There is also a fifth opinion, which not only denies that anything is future but denies all potency toward any future thing whatever. For it says that nothing active can produce anything except while it is actually producing. This is the view of certain men who, as is reported in Metaphysics 9, 5 [n1], are called Megarians. As Averroes says there, this discourse, that is, this opinion, is supposed to come from certain of those who speak. Albert sets out three arguments of theirs there. The first is: a cause is called active with respect to its effect, and cause and effect are simultaneous; therefore a cause is not active before it actually acts. The second is: if some mover can move, and is in potency to moving before it moves, and nothing comes from potency to act except through a motion and a mover distinct from itself, then it needs another, prior mover in order to move. By the same reasoning that other mover in turn needs yet another, prior mover, and so on to infinity, which is impossible. The third is: no nature is deprived of its proper operation. Therefore an active form or potency always has actual operation, and so never precedes it, nor can it precede it. Albert resolves these arguments, as indeed they are easily resolved by anyone. Aristotle and Averroes also sufficiently rebut and refute this opinion there.

NOTES

1. "9. Metaphys. 5": Savile's citation is by book and comment number. The passage is Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (Θ) 3, 1046b29 ff., against the Megarians, with Averroes's commentary on it. I keep Savile's numbers. The "Albertus" of the margin and text is Albert the Great, whose commentary on the same book of the Metaphysics sets out the three arguments.