An infinite succession of impulses, without an active or moving principle, will never give birth to motion, because this would be to produce an effect without the assistance of a cause. This absurdity was asserted by Spinosa; yet when urged by his friends to explain how matter could ever come into motion, if motion was neither essential to matter, nor proceeded from any external cause, he always avoided giving a direct answer. This conduct makes it reasonable to believe, that he himself would have given up his account of motion, if he could have saved his atheistical scheme and his reputation. That motion is essential to all matter, and action as much an attribute of matter, as extension or solidity; and, consequently, every atom of matter is necessarily self-moving, or active from the necessity of its own nature, is asserted by Toland. Though he thought fit to reject the hypothesis of Spinosa as indefensible, yet he believed in the atheistic notion, that motion is essential to matter, and thinks it will be sufficient without troubling the Supreme Being. The reason which has always determined mankind to look out for a cause of motion extrinsical to matter, was this: though they could easily conceive it capable of being moved and divided; yet the conceiving of it to be undivided, and unmoved, was a more simple notion of matter, than the conceiving it divided and moved. This being first in order of nature, and an adequate conception of it too, they thought it necessary to inquire, how it came out of this state, and by what causes motion, from whence this diversity in matter arose, could come into the world? Descartes, though he allowed the infinity of matter, as well as Toland, was yet sensible that even this would not alter the nature of matter, nor the idea that every person had of its inactivity, and therefore could see no way of altering its primitive idea, and reconciling it with the motion of matter, but by introducing an infinite Being, who had sufficient power to rouse matter out of that sleepy state in which its original idea had represented it.[49] That such a circumstance exists, and what it is, a French author very clearly states. He says, The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.