—different from the two previous kinds. Next, a fourth interpreter appeared and re-read yet another ingredient, different from all the earlier ones. From that there arose among the people a fourth sort of illness (1), unlike the maladies already mentioned. As time went on with this great composite remedy and people kept applying their own reinterpretations to its ingredients—altering and replacing them—many diverse diseases afflicted the populace, until the benefit that remedy had originally been meant to secure was lost for most of them.

This, in fact, is the very situation of the newly emerged sects in their dealings with the Sacred Law. Each group has imposed upon the Law an interpretation distinct from that adopted by the others, all the while claiming that theirs is what the Lawgiver actually intended, so that the Law has been torn to shreds and driven far from its first purpose. When the Lawgiver (3), blessings and peace be upon him, knew that such a fate would inevitably befall his Law, he said: “My community will split into seventy-three sects; all of them are in the Fire except one.” (4) By “the one” he meant: the group that follows the outward sense of the Law.