n the matter is not the fact that it can inhere more or less; for
thus the light would not be suddenly received in the air, which can
be illumined more or less. But the reason is to be sought on the part
of the disposition of the matter or subject, as stated above.

Reply Obj. 4: The same instant the form is acquired, the thing begins
to operate with the form; as fire, the instant it is generated moves
upwards, and if its movement was instantaneous, it would be
terminated in the same instant. Now to will and not to will--the
movements of the free-will--are not successive, but instantaneous.
Hence the justification of the ungodly must not be successive.

Reply Obj. 5: The succession of opposites in the same subject must be
looked at differently in the things that are subject to time and in
those that are above time. For in those that are in time, there is no
last instant in which the previous form inheres in the subject; but
there is the last time, and the first instant that the subsequent
form inheres in the matter or subject; and this for the reason, that
in time we are not to consider one instant, since neither do instants
succeed each other immediately in time, nor points in a line, as is
proved in _Physic._ vi, 1. But time is terminated by an instant.
Hence in the whole of the previous time wherein anything is moving
towards its form, it is under the opposite form; but in the last
instant of this time, which is the first instant of the subsequent
time, it has the form which is the term of the movement.

But in those that are above time, it is otherwise. For if there be
any succession of affections or intellectual conceptions in them (as
in the angels), such succession is not measured by continuous time,
but by discrete time, even as the things measured are not continuous,
as stated above (I, Q. 53, AA. 2, 3). In these, therefore, there is a
last instant in which the preceding is, and a first instant in which
the subsequent is. Nor must there be time in between, since there is
no continuity of time, which this would necessitate.

Now the human mind, which is justified, is, in itself, above time,
but is subject to time accidentally, inasmuch as it understands with
continuity and time, with respect to the phantasms in which it
considers the intelligible species, as stated above (I, Q. 85, AA. 1,
2). We must, therefore, decide from this about its change as regards
the condition of temporal movements, i.e. we must say