The formula 'all prerequisites posited, can act and not act': first sense, simultaneity of power not power of simultaneity
The definition that calls freedom the power by which a free agent, given everything required beforehand for acting, can act and not act, do this and that, is not understood in the same way by every theologian of the Roman School. To see this, note that the words can bear several senses.
First, they could be taken to mean that the free agent can act and not act at once, performing opposite acts at the same moment. Everyone rejects this as plainly false.
All agree that in a free agent an act and the absence of that act, or an act and its opposite, cannot coexist at the same time. They therefore take the words to mean only that the free agent has at one and the same time the power for opposite acts, so that the power of acting and the power of not acting are both found in it together.
The schools express this by saying that what is ascribed to the free agent is simultaneity of power, not power of simultaneity.
Latin
XLV. Caeterum descriptio illa in qua libertas dicitur esse id per quod, positis omnibus ad agendum praerequisitis, agens liberum potest agere, & non agere, hoc & illud agere, non eodem sensu exponitur ab omnibus Scholae Romanae Theologis. Quod ut intelligatur, notandum est verbis istis posse tribui multiplicem sensum. Et primo quidem verba illa ita possunt accipi quasi iis significaretur agens liberum posse agere & non agere simul, & eodem tempore contrarios actus exercere. Hic sensus tanquam manifeste falsus ab omnibus rejicitur. Fatentur enim omnes in agente libero simul compati non posse actum & cessationem ab actu, aut unum actum & ejus contrarium; ac proinde verbis illis aliud non significari, quam quod agens liberum simul habet potestatem ad actus contrarios, & quod simul in eo reperitur potestas agendi, & potestas quoque non agendi; quod in Scholis dicitur per hoc agenti libero tribui simultatem potentiae, non potentiam simultatis.