ABSTRACT
Correspondent to cause and effect, are power and act; nay, those and these are the same things; though, for divers considerations, they have divers names. For whensoever any agent has all those accidents which are necessarily requisite for the production of some effect in the patient, then the authors say that agent has power to produce that effect, if it be applied to a patient. This chapter shows that the efficient cause of all motion and mutation consists in the motion of the agent, or agents; and that the power of the agent is the same thing with the efficient cause. Natural power is the eminence of the faculties of body or mind: as extraordinary strength, form, prudence, arts, eloquence, liberality, nobility. Instrumental are those powers, which acquired by these, or by fortune, are means and instruments to acquire more: as riches, reputation, friends, and the secret working of God, which men call good luck.
