The eternal, then, necessarily calls for an eternal act. To posit a specific act that itself is eternal is not, in every respect, intrinsically impossible, for the intellect can only conceive of particular things as originated—even if one were to suppose that the species itself is eternal by virtue of occurring successively, bit by bit, just as motion is conceived only in the form of successive, originated motions, even though someone might claim that the species of motion is eternal.
Moreover, an act must precede its effect; nothing else can precede a supposedly everlasting effect. This is a second, independent proof that everything other than God is originated.
When it is said that “the effect accompanies the cause and the contingent accompanies the efficient cause,” if by “accompanies” one means that the effect comes immediately after the cause, that is conceivable. But if the intent is that the two exist simultaneously, this is impossible, for true precedence cannot be conceived without time.
Likewise, the assertion that the cause precedes the effect by an intellectual rather than a temporal priority is a mere claim. Illustrating it by the hand’s movement preceding the movement of a ring or a sleeve is an inexact analogy, for the hand’s movement is not a complete cause of either; it simply accompanies them. Two concomitant things that issue from one and the same agent are not, one of them, the effect of the other. These matters are discussed in detail elsewhere.
Furthermore, this position entails that the Divine Essence would have a particular eternal act subsisting with it, inseparable from it, together with successive acts that likewise subsist in it—so that the newly occurring events are attributed to those successive acts, while the eternal effect is attributed to the eternal act. This would mean that the eternal act touches the underlying locus but not its concomitants: it would relate to the entity that necessarily underlies the events, but not to the events that necessarily follow from it, as is claimed with the celestial sphere. Yet when an agent produces an effect through an act, it is impossible for him to do so without its concomitants; therefore this would require that