  For Henry even the distinction between esse essentiae and the realitas of an essence is of an intentional type. Such a distinction seems to differ from the distinction between essence and esse existentiae: one of the most salient features of the intentional distinction is that one of the intentions thus distinguished can be conceived even when the other is removed or negated. Essence can be considered in itself, without actuality, and yet it seems more difficult to conceive of it without its own being, since, from a formal perspective, essence is always its being, and the relation of participation in divine essence that constitutes every essence is eternal and indestructible. Therefore Henry was initially tempted to make a distinction based on reason alone between essence and its essential being; as, for example, in the solution adopted in Quodl. I, q. 9. Only later would he abandon this choice to adopt an intentional distinction for this case too. A spectacular example of this change of position is the recasting of q. 4, art. 21 in the Summa. In the final version, Henry rejects what he had previously maintained: that essence is really its being in a strict sense. This inversion is probably due to the need to conserve the distance between the absolute simplicity of the divine essence and the simplicity of created essences, as well as to his new understanding of the priority of essential being, as the first created thing, with regard to all subsequent determinations, beginning with the determination of the content of essences themselves.