this account were true, it would not help you, for the fact that those who are not infallible turned away from something is no proof.

If someone argued against you on the basis of the texts of the prophets, believing them to be infallible and having evidence establishing that, you would not accept his argument. All the more reason, then, not to accept from you the statements of people whom you and he agree are not infallible.

How much more so when this account is not even correct? Indeed, many ancient and later thinkers allowed that things which the First wills and has power over may subsist in it. They even explicitly stated that it moves, and that newly arising volitions and cognitions, among other things, subsist in it, as discussed earlier.

Unless their position is refuted by a rational argument, what you have mentioned provides no proof.

[The Third Argument]

You may be asked:

What do you mean by change? Do you mean its transformation, like a body’s transformation from one form into another? Or do you mean its doing something it was not previously doing?

If you mean the former, the second premise is denied. For moving bodies from which what exists potentially is brought into actuality—such as the celestial spheres—do not thereby undergo a transformation in form.

If you mean the latter, you may be told:

This is not called change, or we do not call it change. Even if you call it change, neither your merely calling it that nor our calling it that—if we agree with your terminology—would establish that it is impossible. Mere words do not establish rational truths. Why, then, do you say that this is impossible?

Rather, this is precisely the point at issue; you have merely rephrased it. Is it merely because