For if everything that issues forth is an effusion from Him, yet some portion of that effusion is delayed, then His very essence cannot be what necessitates the effusion; something else would have to be joined to it. And if it is alleged that His essence brings things into existence one after another, this would make it impossible for all contingent beings to be produced. We reply: such a claim undermines your own principle, for whoever produces things successively is not, by his eternal essence, the necessary cause of anything. Rather, whenever a new occurrence proceeds from Him—although His actions may be continuous, coming one after another—there is not among them a single act that is eternal.
The same, and even more so, applies to His effects, for an effect follows its act; thus in neither His actions nor His effects is anything eternal, even though they may be uninterrupted. The perpetuity or pre-eternity of a genus does not entail the eternity of any individual instance—indeed, it contradicts it. Had one act been eternal, that specific act alone would be the eternal one, and the successive acts would not. Moreover, anything whose very nature is to occur in sequence, like motion or sound, cannot have any of its parts be eternal, perpetual, or abiding; and if someone claims that it is everlasting, eternal, and abiding, we must ask: which “species” is being so described?
Furthermore, their position collapses whichever of the two contrary suppositions one adopts, and thus it is false in reality. Either the perpetuity of events is possible—which is their doctrine of occurrences without a first—or it is not. If it is not possible, as many theologians maintain, then the class of events must have a first beginning, and whatever never ceases to be accompanied by events must itself be contingent, so the universe must be created. If, on the other hand, the perpetuity of events is possible, then it is likewise possible that this world, which God created in six days, was preceded by events before it; therefore it cannot be said to be eternal.