An infinite regress would ensue, and in your own doctrine an infinite regress is permissible. If it is permissible, then why should it not be possible that, with respect to any given effect, the efficient cause was not fully sufficient from pre-eternity, and that its producing of each occurrence is conditioned upon a prior occurrence without end, so that all its effects are brought into being anew? It is evident that this is what the argument demands. Al-Rāzī and others missed this reply because they hold that an infinite regress is impossible; thus, from the very outset of their proof they took for granted what they pronounced at its close: “an infinite regress follows—and that is impossible.”