or from a creator—on the grounds that affirming a creator entails affirming their proceeding from an eternal agent or coming into being through Him without time, place, or matter, contrary to what is observed of bodies proceeding from something else or coming into being—then allowing that they are necessarily existent in themselves and eternal, or that they came into being by themselves without an agent, is further removed from observation, sense perception, and reason than their proceeding from an agent without matter, place, or time.

For the things we observe proceed within place and time, from matter, and from an agent of some kind, even if you call it nature, celestial forces, or something else. You cannot deny perceptible causes that come into being. Thus, if you allow these things to exist without time, place, matter, or an agent, that is further removed from sense perception and reason than what you sought to avoid. And if you say that it is eternal and necessarily existent in itself, the difficulties this entails for you are far greater than those entailed by acknowledging that these things have a Maker who is eternal and necessarily existent.

Whatever objections you then raise against affirming His existence—for example, that this entails His being a subject in which attributes and acts subsist, and the like—apply with even greater force to your assertion that the celestial spheres are eternal and necessarily existent in themselves.

And if someone were hypothetically to say that they came into being by themselves, this would be still more impossible. This is something that deserves careful attention. Thus, everything said by the eternalists among those who deny