it also held that temporal events with no beginning are impossible. It therefore said:

Action cannot be perpetual; hence, He must have become an agent after not having been one. It then follows that an agent possessing power gives preponderance to one of two possible acts over the other without any determining factor, for the capacity to act is not specific to either one and has always existed(1). If it is said that this capacity became specifically directed or was temporally originated, then the capacity to act(2) must have originated without an originator and been specified without anything to specify it; He must have become capable after not having been so, without any cause; and action must have passed from impossibility to possibility without any cause necessitating this transition. Once that is admitted, it is all the more admissible that He should determine one of the two possible acts.

Although the majority maintain that these consequences are false, they say, “Those premises(3) compelled us to accept them,” because, as we have mentioned, they supposed that there was no distinction between the kind of action and an individual act.

If they were told, “Then affirm these consequences while denying those premises,” they would say(4), “An agent possessing power determines one of his two possible acts over the other(5) without any determining factor and originates temporal events without a cause, even though his particular effect coexists with him and neither the individual act nor its effect has a beginning.” They would thus be compelled(6) to affirm consequences whose falsity is manifest while denying the premises that, in their view, necessitated those consequences—premises some of which are manifestly false, while the falsity of others is obscure. They would therefore be compelled(7) to affirm the false consequence—