 As we have seen, the success of the CCC argument relies heavily on the claim that the act of creation ex nihilo and the act of conservation are indistinguishable in terms of both the dependence of the creature on God and the role and content of divine causal activity. That is, the two acts are qualitatively identical in terms of what God is doing, causally speaking. Malebranche reinforces this claim in his Dialogues by emphasizing that God’s causal activity of sustaining the being or esse of a creature and his causal activity of bringing about the modes of a creature cannot come apart: