through power and will, it must be created and cannot subsist in Him. For if it subsisted in Him, originated events would subsist in Him. Yet originated events cannot subsist in Him, because if they did, He would never be free of them, and whatever is never free of originated events is itself originated.”

They said: “For it is through this principle that we established that bodies have a beginning, and through it that the world was established to have a beginning.”

They said: “It is known that whatever does not precede an originated event cannot exist before it: it must exist either alongside it or after it. Whatever exists alongside an originated event or after it is itself originated.”

Many of them failed to recognize the distinction between events as a kind and a particular event. A particular event, or a finite set of events, cannot have existed perpetually without beginning. Whatever did not exist before them must exist either alongside them or after them, and whatever is of this description is certainly originated. This is plain to everyone. The question requiring examination and giving rise to dispute, however, concerns “events as a kind”: can the kind be perpetual, such that the Lord continually speaks or acts by His will and power, or is that impossible?

When a group recognized this distinction, they said: “This too is impossible, because a beginningless succession of events is impossible.” They advanced arguments for this, such as the argument from correspondence, the argument that what is infinite cannot come to an end, and similar arguments. Most of what has been stated on this subject and related matters has already been discussed elsewhere; every occasion calls for its own discourse.

When those philosophers saw that this position was demonstrably false according to clear reason, that events cannot originate without a newly arising cause, and that it is impossible for the Lord to become an agent after