specific to it, whereas a cause devoid of volitional states entails only what belongs among its necessary concomitants. Only something proportionate to it, as an effect is proportionate to its cause, can be one of its necessary concomitants. Yet the effect possesses differing magnitudes, numbers, and attributes whose like cannot possibly (1) exist in its cause. Consequently, no such correspondence is possible; and where correspondence is impossible, it cannot be the cause of that effect.

Furthermore, if this cause is assumed to be an eternal necessitating cause of the eternal effect, its necessitation of that effect would occur either through its essence alone, apart from its successive states, or together with those states. The first is impossible, for it is impossible for the essence (2) to be devoid of its necessary concomitants. The second is likewise impossible, because an essence that necessarily entails its attributes and states acts only through those attributes and states. Successive states cannot have a specific effect that is eternal and beginningless, nor can they be a condition for an eternal effect, because an eternal effect must have a complete eternal cause (3), whereas neither the totality of successive states nor any one of them is eternal (4). The only thing eternal is the beginningless kind whose members come into being one after another, and this cannot serve as a condition in pre-eternity.

This is like saying:

The celestial sphere that is in perpetual motion (5) necessitates an eternal entity in motion, [or one not in motion. This is impossible according to them and others, for anything whose act is conditioned upon motion cannot have a specific product that is eternal. Even if it were assumed that