ablution, and I slipped in my answer; he then broke it down into four aspects, and I failed in every one of them.
He said, “Something you need five times a day you leave unlearned, yet you burden yourself with knowledge of the Creator! Whenever such a thought crosses your mind, return to Allah and to His words: ‘Your God is one God; there is no deity but Him, the All-Merciful, the Compassionate … Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth …’ (al-Baqarah 2:163-164). Take the creation as your evidence for the Creator, and do not force yourself to know what your intellect cannot reach.”
He concluded, “So I repented.” (1)

Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: In my collection from al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān he related, “I was present with al-Shāfiʿī—or Abū Shuʿayb told me this—yet I know that ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Yūsuf ibn ʿAmr, and Ḥafṣ al-Fard were also there, and al-Shāfiʿī used to call him ‘Ḥafṣ the Solitary.’ Ḥafṣ asked ʿAbd Allāh, ‘What is your view regarding the Quran?’ ʿAbd Allāh refused to answer, so Ḥafṣ asked Yūsuf, who likewise kept silent and gestured toward al-Shāfiʿī. Ḥafṣ then questioned al-Shāfiʿī and produced his objections, and the debate went on at length. Al-Shāfiʿī established the proof against him that the Quran is the speech of Allah, uncreated, and pronounced Ḥafṣ to be a disbeliever.
Al-Rabīʿ said: I later met Ḥafṣ, and he remarked, ‘Al-Shāfiʿī wanted to kill me.’ (2)

Al-Rabīʿ also said: I heard al-Shāfiʿī declare, ‘Faith is statement and action; it rises and falls.’ (3)