the other, so there is no need to posit a part in which one side cannot be distinguished from another, nor is there any need to posit division and separation (1) continuing without end. Rather, bodies grow smaller (2), and then, once they have become small (3), they transform. This position is more reasonable than the alternatives.

Since their argument was based on one of these two premises—affirming indivisible atoms (4) and that bodies are composed of them, or affirming that rest (5) is a positive reality—and since disagreement over this is well known, while, on close examination, the proof establishes only the opposite, no extended discussion has been given to establishing it (6).

Nor is there any need (7), in establishing anything brought by the messengers, for false methods such as these. Although those who engaged in them were more knowledgeable and rational than the philosophers who opposed them (8), and closer to plain reason and authentic revelation, nevertheless, because of their errors in matters of revelation and reason, proponents of falsehood among the philosophers and others shared some of those errors with them. They added further notions that were even farther removed from reason and revealed law, and began arguing against those speculative theologians—who were closer than they to revelation and reason—by pointing to the falsity of the positions in which those theologians disagreed with them (9) and in which they departed from—