both of which are false. Thus, although they maintain (1) that the Originator of the world is its cause, they are the people furthest from observing what causation entails.

These thinkers [also] (2) say that he is a complete, pre-eternal cause of part of the world, such as the celestial spheres, but that he is not in pre-eternity a complete cause of any temporal event. Rather, he becomes a complete cause of a temporal event only when it comes into being. He thus becomes a cause after not having been one (3), even though his state before [and during] (4), and after, is one (5) and the same. Therefore, the fact that each time is distinguished by the events occurring in it, and that he becomes at that time a complete cause of those events, must have a determining factor. Yet there is no determining factor other than the simple essence, whose intrinsic state [is one and the same from pre-eternity to eternity. How, then, can it conceivably single out certain times for particular temporal events rather than others, when its intrinsic states are identical?] (6).

This is precisely to single out (7) each of the temporally originated (8), mutually similar (9) states from all its counterparts through that act of origination and those originated things, without any determining factor uniquely associated with that particular instance. Thus, these thinkers have fallen into many times what they sought to escape—indeed, into multiples upon multiples of it, without end.