He went on to say:

“As for the second premise, it is the premise of necessity and contingency. This premise is of the highest nobility and loftiness, representing the furthest reach of rational intellects. They maintain that every existent is either necessary or contingent; the contingent must depend on a Necessary Being, and that Necessary must be necessary in His essence and in His attributes, for were He contingent He would require another cause.”

After addressing the first premise, he turned to the second and declared that its import is the affirmation of His necessity in all His negative and affirmative attributes. They argue: the proof of this is that if His Essence suffices for the realization of a given attribute, that attribute must endure as long as the Essence endures. If, however, His Essence is not sufficient, then with respect to that attribute His Essence would require something else, and one must ultimately terminate in a Being who is necessary in and of Himself—so we return to the point already stated: the permanence of His Essence entails the permanence of that attribute.

He then observed: The philosopher says that the reason He exerts influence upon other things is either His very Essence or the concomitants of His Essence; hence the permanence of His Essence entails the permanence of His causal efficacy and the permanence of its effect. The theologian, however, says that since it is necessary in