had acquired from the attributes of the nasut (human nature), which in their theology stands to it as the body stands to the soul.

As for their claim, “We have not neglected what we received, nor rejected what we were entrusted with,” their words are identical to what the Jews said to the Messiah: “We shall not abandon what we received, nor renounce what we inherited from Moses, peace be upon him.”

Both groups can be answered from two angles:

First, you have altered and distorted the Scripture that was sent down to you and the law that was legislated for you. No intelligent person doubts that you have tampered with its meanings and rulings. What the Jews followed after such alteration was not the law that Moses, peace be upon him, had instituted; and what the Christians followed after their alteration was not the law that the Messiah, peace be upon him, had laid down.

Second, you have denied the final Book and the last Messenger who was sent to you. Whoever rejects what has been revealed to him from his Lord—and the Messenger dispatched to him—is an unbeliever deserving the punishment of this world and the next, even if before that he had been following the law of a Messenger and an uncorrupted Book. How much worse, then, when that earlier book has already been distorted in its rulings and meanings?