that the essence’s possession of attributes is like its possession of motions, and neither entails that the bearer requires something distinct from itself.

As for his statement, “The matter cannot be divided into something composite in its own right and something composite through another, ultimately arriving at an eternal composite, just as, among existing things, one ultimately arrives at an eternal existent,” the response is: Rather, when these Muslims, such as Abū Hāmid and others like him, addressed you using their terminology, while you treated an attribute’s subsistence in its bearer as composition, they said, according to your terminology, that it can be divided into something composite in its own right and something composite through another.

The truth of the matter is that, if you call the possession of attributes composition, we do not concede your claim that what is composite cannot be divided into what is eternal and necessarily existent and what is originated and contingent. If you do not call it composition, the very basis of your argument collapses 0 But you called this composition and denied it; hence you said that what is composite admits of no such division. Your claim was therefore disputable—indeed, false.

As for his statement, “Someone could say: ‘If something composite in its own right exists, then something that moves of itself will exist; and if something that moves of itself exists, then something nonexistent of itself will exist.’”