is specified by a determinate magnitude, attribute, and state (1). This specification entails that there must be a corresponding specificity in its cause; otherwise, a cause possessing no specificity cannot necessitate something specified by a determinate magnitude, state, and attribute.

It is well known that, if the agent is posited to be the Essence considered apart from the successive states that subsist in it—whether it is said that no such states subsist in it or that they do—then, under either supposition (2), anything beginningless and eternal that it necessitates would be necessitated by the bare Essence alone, considered apart from successive states. For the individual successive states exist one after another and therefore cannot necessitate (3) anything beginningless and eternal. Indeed, that which necessitates a particular, beginningless, and eternal effect must all the more itself be beginningless, eternal, and determinate. Yet none among (4) the successive states is beginningless and determinate (5) from all eternity. It is therefore impossible for an effect whose necessitation depends upon them to be beginningless and eternal.

If, then, it is assumed to be beginningless and eternal, this can only be by assuming the bare Essence itself to be the necessitating cause. Yet the bare Essence possesses no specificity that would determine the celestial sphere, rather than anything else, to be the effect. This is unlike saying that it came into being after not existing, owing to causes that necessitated its origination and particular determination; for on that view, this objection no longer arises. This is an independent proof concerning the issue, one not previously mentioned in this book.