If, after all this, they say:

He is an eternal, complete cause, and His emanation is universal; but (1) it depends upon the coming into existence of receptive substrates and dispositions, whether through the emergence of celestial configurations and planetary conjunctions or through something else. (2)

They are to be told:

If you say, “He is the eternal cause of this originated thing,” it follows that this thing must have existed from eternity.

But if you say, “He does not become a complete cause until the receptive substrates come into existence,” you are to be told:

If the coming into existence of the receptive substrates is from Him, then He is the one who brings both into existence. Before bringing them into existence, therefore, He was the complete cause of neither one. Then He brought them (3) both into existence: the receptive substrate and that which it receives. If He brought them into existence (4) without anything new occurring, it necessarily follows that He either has always been their complete cause or has not become their complete cause. Consequently, these two originated things must either be eternal or nonexistent.

For if He has always been (5) their cause, they must be eternal; and if that completion did not occur, they must be nonexistent. Yet you maintain that the cause of these two originated things arose after it had not existed—that is, that it arose in its entirety after not having existed. (6) Yet there is nothing here that necessitates the arising of this completeness. (7) For the agent that brings about the completion (8) is in the same condition after completion as before completion, (9) and it is therefore impossible that—