 On the predominant traditional view, conservation is continuous creation. Adherents of this view typically say with Francisco Suárez that God’s creation and conservation of things are “only conceptually distinct” (Suárez 1597, 120). Jonathan Edwards, for example, says, “God’s upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment…. So that this effect differs not at all from the first creation, but only circumstantially…” (Edwards 1758, 402). In other words, there is no real difference between the act of creation and the act of conservation, though different words may be used for them. Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Berkeley all express similar views. More recently, Philip Quinn likewise treats both God’s creating and God’s conserving as species of bringing about a thing’s existence. We call the act ‘creation’ if it occurs at the first time at which the creature exists, and we call it ‘conservation’ if it occurs at a later time, but the action is the same (e.g., Quinn 1988, 54).