The judge said:

“Someone objected to this, saying: ‘This is a retreat on their part and contradicts what he stated, for he urged us to reflect on ourselves and on the heavens and the earth. These are not the prophets’ miracles, but bodies and accidents.’”

He said:

“The theologians used accidents as evidence because a body is never devoid of them, while they themselves have come into being: we know that an accident is nonexistent at one time and existent at another. This attests to their having come into being, and likewise to the coming into being of whatever is never devoid of them.”

He said:

“By ‘their changing within them,’ he means substances changing with respect to accidents—that is, changing from black to white and from motion to rest.”

I say:

‘Their changing within them’ may mean accidents changing within substances, for they change from nonexistence to existence, from existence to nonexistence, and from one kind to another, such as whiteness and blackness, motion and rest.

This critic of al-Khattābī was mistaken, for al-Khattābī mentioned two paths, as we have noted: