even if he were to say, “I am holding fast to the scripture that has been sent down to me.”

Likewise, whenever God sends a messenger after Christ, it becomes incumbent to believe in him; whoever does not believe in him is an unbeliever—just as the Children of Israel who refused to believe in Christ were unbelievers.

The Children of Israel were far more closely linked to Moses and the Torah than the Romans and others are to Christ and the Gospel, for they were Hebrews and the Torah itself was in Hebrew.

The second point: Their claim that they are, at the present time, adhering to the religion that the disciples conveyed from Christ—peace be upon him—is patently false. In fact, most of what they now practice in creed and law—such as their Creed, facing the East in prayer, placing icons and statues inside churches, using those images as intermediaries and seeking intercession through the figures they portray, instituting festivals in their names, naming churches after them, declaring pork permissible, abandoning circumcision, adopting monasticism, fixing the fast in spring and extending it to fifty days, along with their particular prayers, offerings, and canon law—