And if you attribute temporal events to celestial motion, the reply is:
If the perpetual motion is uniform, temporal events must likewise be uniform. If it varies, then one time has been distinguished by something absent at another.
Indeed, it may be said:
To say that different effects necessarily proceed from the agent in perpetual succession, without any act subsisting in Him or any attribute belonging to Him, is even more contrary to reason than to say that He produces different effects at one time rather than another. The latter is only part of the former, so the difficulty involved in the latter is present in the former, with something further besides.
[The Fifth Argument]
It may be said:
Your statement, “If He did not act and then acted, something calling for His action must have arisen, or something incompatible with it must have ceased to exist. The same argument then applies to that, without any stopping point,” establishes, at most, that it is impossible for Him to have become an agent after not having been one. This consequence is binding on you as well.
But we ask:
Why do you say that He has always acted, doing one thing after another?
If you reply:
“This entails an infinite succession of temporal events, and an infinite succession of temporal events, one after another, is possible according to you.”
Then, supposing that He continually acts, doing one thing after another, everything other than Him would have come into existence within an admissible infinite succession. That is possible on your view, and it is what your argument entails.
If this is false, your position is invalid. If it is true, then it may be asked:
What prevents Him from doing what He had not previously done because a temporal event occurs, whose occurrence depends on another temporal event, and so on without end, with all these temporal events proceeding from Him?
It may then be said:
Either everything that has come into existence can do so without an act subsisting in Him, or an act subsisting in Him is necessary. Neither supposition entails the correctness of your position.