—on the assumption that one affirms the threat—is the more likely outcome; hence that assumption is the sounder course.

By this very argument, the overwhelming majority of scholars have preferred the prohibitive evidence to the permissive one, and many jurists have, on this basis, employed the principle of precaution in a wide range of rulings.

As for precaution expressed in positive action, it is, as a rule, unanimously regarded by rational people as praiseworthy.

Accordingly, when a person’s fear of erring by denying the divine threat is weighed against his fear of erring by failing to believe it, the proof that obliges him to affirm the threat—together with the safety that ensues from so affirming—remain two unopposed arguments.

No one, therefore, may contend that the lack of definitive evidence for a given threat proves its non-existence, any more than the absence of a mass-transmitted report for readings beyond those found in the codex proves such readings nonexistent; for the absence of evidence does not establish the absence of what the evidence would indicate.

Whoever categorically denies something that pertains to knowledge merely because there is no conclusive proof for its existence—as some theologians are wont to do—is manifestly in error.

Yet if we know that the existence of a thing necessarily entails the existence of evidence for it, and we ascertain that no such evidence exists, then we may decisively deny the existence of that thing, for the absence of what is necessary is proof of the absence of what depends upon it.