If they were 4ohm and higher sensitivity, you probably could have gotten away with 16ga, but at 6 Ohm and 88dB sensitivity, you're going to need to stick with 14ga minimum.
For 40' you should use no less than 14ga., unfortunately. What you might be able to do is use two runs of wire per speaker and connect them together, to effectively give you a higher total ga. Do you have the speaker specs?