Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 8)

§. 11. If, therefore, the matter is so, no reason remains why humanity is said to be without an origin; since its parts are subject to creation, when they took their beginning from God, who is without a principle. For we all, in order to exist, had to be produced: for the series of those things that need production in order to exist is not to be drawn out to infinity; for we must finally fall into an unbegotten (or uncreated) being.

§. 12. Therefore, it was necessary that there always be something through which those things that were not, might finally begin to exist. For nothing can come from non-being to being, unless some cause is understood first through which it is: from which it is brought about that whatever things are now made have always had a maker (or creator). But the first efficient cause itself was not made by anything: otherwise, it would not be the first efficient cause of made things, but it also would be produced by produced things: but where can we find an efficient cause, if all things are under creation, and no cause of made things is present?

§. 13. Let us weigh the theory exposed by us in another way. The corruption of the particles of any part, and again the corruption of the smallest part of this particle, if it arises from the nature and essence of the body itself, signals the future corruption also of the whole body. For what is corruption first creeping into some part of the body, if not a certain difference induced in a part or particle, by which it happens that they differ from those bodies from which they were taken? If indeed that which was of one and the same nature underwent the dissolution of corruption, with other bodies also waiting to obtain the same dissolution and corruption; so that death concludes all bodies in one end.

§. 14. Whoever, therefore, using natural reason, sees the condition of living creatures and animals endowed with reason, and universally of all things that are and have been in the world, that they are in flux, would he not—