These newly-occurring events in fact inhere in It; It does not subsist apart from them, such that one could claim It acts without them. Simply positing a separation does not establish that a real separation exists.

It would be no different from saying: “A bare Essence produces an act while detached from Its attributes”—even though those very attributes are a prerequisite for acting, and the conditioned cannot exist without its condition. Likewise, the contingent accidents inhering in the effect are themselves a condition for the effect’s existence, so it is impossible for that which necessitates such accidents to exist without the accidents themselves.

In the same way, it is impossible for an Essence that has necessary concomitants to act apart from those concomitants; Its act of bringing forth what necessitates events is conditional upon Its act of bringing forth the events that necessarily accompany it. Yet this second act comes about only gradually, little by little; accordingly, the first act is conditioned by something that itself comes into existence piecemeal, and a conditioned reality cannot exist without its condition. Hence the act of producing the necessitant by itself is impossible.

Just as the existence of an Essence stripped of attributes is impossible, so too is the existence of Its act stripped of what inheres in It. The act exists only together with its concomitants, and is an act of that Essence only in their company—just as the effect can neither exist nor be an effect except along with its concomitants.

Since the act can occur only with successive concomitants, it cannot be an eternal act, and therefore the effect cannot be eternal either. Those successive concomitants are such that neither their aggregate nor any single one of them is eternal; only the species is “eternal” in the sense that it comes to be continuously, bit by bit. Consequently, the act conditioned by them likewise exists bit by bit, for the conditioned cannot exist without its condition; and if the act arises in stages, the effect does so all the more, for an effect cannot precede its act. Hence there is no perpetual, determinate act, and therefore no perpetual, determinate effect.